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THE JEWISH RELIGION 
IN THE TIME OF JESUS 



The Jewish Religion 
in the Time of Jesus 



BY 

G: HOLLMAN 

OF HALLE 



TRANSLATED BY EDWARD LUMMIS, M. A. 




BOSTON 

AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION 
1909 



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PREFACE 

The account given in the following pages is 
intended to make accessible to all who are 
interested in the subject the present state of 
investigation in this field, as it is exhibited especi- 
ally in the great works of Schiirer and Bousset. 
While its purpose is to furnish the lay reader 
with an introductory guide, the more instructed 
will perhaps find it not unwelcome as a brief survey 
of the subject. Considering the uncertainty and 
obscurity in which, in spite of all the labours of 
the last ten years, later Judaism is still involved, 
I have aimed not so much at completeness, as to 
bring out sharply and clearly the decisive and 
fundamental lines. I have intentionally dealt 
somewhat more fully with the Jewish apocalyptic, 
because it is least known to the lay reader, because 
a popular account of it has not yet appeared, and 
because it is precisely on this ground that so many 



VI PREFACE 

preconditions for understanding the thought-world 
of Jesus, in the light of religious history, are to 
be found. I recommend all those to whom post- 
exilic Judaism is still entirely unknown to read 
the Appendix first, so as to acquire at least some 
of the elementary facts necessary to the under- 
standing of the historical situation. 

Georg Hollmann, 

Halle, 15 December, 1904. 






CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface v 

Introduction ix 

I Unity of the Church and Distinctions within it i 

II Doctrine and Piety in the Church . 39 

III Popular Piety 74 

IV The Jewish Apocalyptic 91 

Conclusion 128 

Appendix 

(1) Historical Table from the Exile to the Destruction 

of Jerusalem 132 

(2) Chronological Survey of the most important 

Literary Sources 134 

Literature 138 



INTRODUCTION 

What was the religion of the Jews at the time 
of Jesus' public work ? This is not merely a 
question for the scholar who happens to take an 
interest in this special religion at a definite date 
in its development ; it is of the widest possible 
significance. Every one who wishes to understand 
Jesus, or Paul, or early Christianity in general, 
must find an answer to it ; for the new religion 
took its rise in the bosom of Judaism, bears the 
tokens of its origin, and had to struggle upwards 
through severe contests into freedom. Only he 
who is able to believe that Christianity suddenly 
descended, a perfectly new thing, from a super- 
natural world into this, can remain indifferent to 
the surroundings in which it arose. The rest of 
us must take account of the general law of origins 
— that every new manifestation, without pre- 
judice to its originality, is conditioned, among 



X INTRODUCTION 

other things, by the environment in which it 
arose. Even Jesus is subject to this law. In 
spite of all efforts to Aryanise him the fact remains 
that he can only be comprehended by means of 
Judaism. His conception of the universe has its 
roots in Judaism. This is the foundation on 
which all the mighty freshness of his moral and 
religious personality is based. For this reason all 
who wish to understand the religion of Jesus must 
also know the religion which the Jews had at the 
time of his appearance. 

Is it enough if we read the Old Testament ? 
Certainly not. That was the serious mistake 
made by a bygone period, an unhistorical type 
of thought. The Old Testament could not pos- 
sibly suffice for our purpose unless its writings 
came down to the time of Jesus, so that we might 
really discern in them the religion of the Jews who 
were then alive. But that is not the case. Most 
of the Old Testament writings are very considerably 
older. The books which belong for certain to the 
two centuries before Christ are only a few Psalms, 
Daniel and Esther, with perhaps Ecclesiastes. 
Since the time of the Maccabees, which marks the 
great turning-point in the post-exile period, the 



INTRODUCTION XI 

Jewish religion had undergone a very important 
development ; this is easily perceived when we 
examine the pieces of Jewish literature which 
stand nearest to the time of Jesus. A distinction 
must be made between the religion of the Jews 
of the time of Christ, and the deposit of a long 
process of religious development, such as lies be- 
fore us in the Old Testament. This appears to 
be a very simple truth ; but hard fighting has 
been needed to establish it, and there are many 
who do not understand it even now. 

The recognition of this truth does not in the 
least imply a depreciation of the Old Testament. 
A knowledge of its contents, indeed, is quite in- 
dispensable to the study of the Jewish religion 
in Jesus' time. It was the Bible of the Jews of 
that age, and seemed to them to contain merely 
their own religion. The Old Testament was 
always their base and starting-point, but it must 
be owned that they had gone, unconsciously, very 
far beyond it. Still the holy Scripture served 
also as a counterpoise to the new religious develop- 
ment. Should the religious sense be offended by 
any of the elements of the religion which prevailed 
in its own time, it was enabled to survey past 



Xll INTRODUCTION 

ages, and to recover better things which had been 
left behind. Jesus it was, pre-eminently Jesus, 
who often reached back beyond the religion of 
Jewry to the religion of Israel, especially that of its 
prophets. But, after all, the literature which will 
be of first importance in our study of the Jewish 
religion in Jesus' time is the religious literature 
which that time itself produced. 



Chapter I 

UNITY OF THE CHURCH AND 
DISTINCTIONS WITHIN IT 

When Jesus appeared the Jewish nation was 
not one of those numerous Asiatic races about 
which people neither knew nor cared. On the 
contrary, it was spread over the whole world, as 
every one knows from the story of Pentecost. 1 
Greeks and Romans, learned and lewd, all knew 
the Jews from their own point of view, and had 
their own dealings with them. We have many 
testimonies of heathen writers to prove this. 
Judaism had become a world-wide power. Im- 
portant beginnings had been made, especially in 
Egypt, before the Maccabean age ; but the 
extension of Judaism in the grand sense does not 
seem to have originated until after the great 
upheaval of the people in the war of liberation 

lActs 2«-» 



2 UNITY OF THE CHURCH 

under the Maccabees. The racial forces then set 
free sought for opportunities of exercise, both 
within and beyond the land of Palestine. The 
Herodian age in particular, because of the 
sagacious pro-Roman policy of the Idumeans, 
may well have been favourable to the diffusion 
of the Jews throughout the entire Roman empire. 
And with regard to the time of the Emperor 
Augustus, in which Jesus was born, Strabo is 
able to write about the Jews : ' They are spread 
about in almost every city of the globe, and it is 
not easy to find any place in the world which has 
not given shelter to this people, and does not 
stand under its sway.' 1 They were remarkably 
strongly represented in Egypt and Cyrene, and 
in cosmopolitan cities like Rome and Alexandria. 
The question forcibly suggests itself— what was 
it that connected the Jews in foreign lands with 
their native Palestine? What common bond 
united them all ? 

It was not the bond of nationality. No doubt 
the foreign Jews always felt that they were Jews. 
But such a tie will not long endure unless, over 
and above the racial idiosyncrasy— which is, 

i According to Josephus, Antiquities 14, 7 2 - 



AND DISTINCTIONS WITHIN IT 3 

beyond question, especially sharp and strong 
among the Jews, — there is a strong, imposing, 
independent mother country, whose far-off scions 
can think of her with pride and joy as still their 
own, and gain from her the power to preserve 
their national feeling. But what was Palestine 
in the Augustan age ? A subject-state of Rome. 
Since the Babylonian captivity the Jewish people 
had never been able to regain any lasting national 
independence. 1 It had been tossed from hand 
to hand, from Persian to Macedonian, from 
Egyptian to Syrian, only to rest caught at last 
in the brazen clasp of Rome. But a subject- 
people cannot keep its distant members for ever, 
if the question is to be decided by national feeling- 
There certainly were times when the ancient 
national force broke out with an almost volcanic, 
unearthly fury. One such outbreak occurred 
when the Syrian ruler Antiochus Epiphanes tried, 
with brutal violence, to force the Jewish people 
to accept Grecian culture. The bloody struggles 
under the leadership of the Maccabees, which 
gave answer to this attempt, meant first of all 
a passionate flaming up of the old national 
1 Except during the Hasmonean dynasty, 141-63 B.C. 



4 UNITY OF THE CHURCH 

strength; and their immediate consequence was a 
ruthless exclusiveness against everything foreign,* 
a hardening of national peculiarities, a burning 
concern for national independence. And again, 
jnst at the time of Jesus' appearance and in the 
next few decades, an extraordinary political 
fermentation was at work in the Jewish people. 
The yoke of Roman rule was growing intolerable. 
The stronger the feeling that they had fallen under 
the sceptre of an impregnable, universal power, 
so much the more convulsive, we may even say 
feverish, grew the longing for their ancient 
freedom 'Freedom from Rome at any price 
was the watchword of the people. Insurrection 
blazed forth now here, now there ; false Messiahs 
multiplied, promising the deluded populace that 
they would restore the kingdom of David in greater 
glory than of old ; until that last great rising came 
in the seventh decade of the first century, that 
mad, hopeless struggle with an irresistible an- 
tagonist, which ended in the overwhelming catas- 
trophe of the year 7 o A.*, These were certainly 
last attempts of the Jews, attempts which will 
always command our sympathy, to maintain them- 

x The book of Esther is a striking testimony to tins. 



AND DISTINCTIONS WITHIN IT 5 

selves as a nation. But they cannot blind us to 
the fact that, in spite of all that tense national 
feeling, the tie which united all Jews was not 
nationality. A decisive proof of this is the in- 
contestable fact that Judaism not only survived 
the final collapse of the nation, which began in the 
year 70 with the destruction of Jerusalem and 
ended with the suppression of the insurrection 
of Barcochba in 135, but did so with ease, without 
its existence being threatened for a single moment. 
It must therefore have been something other than 
national community that held the Jews together 
amid all their dispersion, amid all their restless 
wandering, and indeed has held them together from 
that time down to the present day. 

Imperceptibly — one might almost say by stealth 
—a yet stronger bond, a spiritual bond, had been 
woven, the unity of one common Church. Whether 
the Jew was in Rome, Corinth, or Alexandria, 
everywhere he found his synagogue, his Bible, 
his feasts, above all his Sabbath, and the contribu- 
tion to the Temple in Jerusalem ; everywhere 
the same spiritual atmosphere, the air of one and 
the same Church. In this connexion the syna- 
gogue must first be mentioned. 



O UNITY OF THE CHURCH 

The focus of the religious life of the Jews was 
no longer the Temple of Jerusalem. They yielded 
to it, indeed, the due respect and reverence which 
was a tradition from their fathers. Every year 
the Temple tribute was collected throughout the 
Diaspora 1 ; every one must pay it from his 
twentieth year onwards, and no true Jew shirked 
the duty. Enormous sums, carried by accredited 
ambassadors, flowed in this way into the sanctuary. 
Moreover pilgrimages were paid every year to 
Jerusalem, the holy city, and its Temple, just as 
later the Mohammedans went as pilgrims to Mecca. 
Nevertheless it was inevitable that the importance 
of the Temple should decline, as it actually did. 
If even the Galilean found great difficulty in 
journeying to Jerusalem, how much greater must 
have been the difficulties of the Jews of the 
Diaspora, who dwelt at remote distances. There 
must certainly have been many to whom it was 
impossible, for reasons of money or health, to 
come even once a year to Jerusalem. And what 
signifies after all one single festal visit to the holy 
site ? The religious life cannot be nourished on 

1 Diaspora means Dispersion, to wit that of the Jews in 
the world outside Palestine. 



AND DISTINCTIONS WITHIN IT 7 

that the whole year through. In this case, too, 
a decisive proof that Jewish piety, in spite of its 
external reverence towards the Temple worship, 
had been imperceptibly detached from it, lies in 
the fact that the destruction of the sanctuary 
and its worship in the year 70 did not seriously 
impair the strength of Judaism. 

The actual religious life had long before found 
its new focus in the synagogue, an institution 
which has lasted to the present day, weathered 
all storms, and so proved its utility. The word 
synagogue, i.e. c assembly,' denotes both the 
religious community and the place in which the 
inhabitants of any district assemble for divine 
service on Sabbath, feast-days, and fast-days. 1 
It cannot now be determined with any certainty 
when the first synagogues were established. 

1 The chief religious festivals of the Jews, besides the 
Sabbath, are : the Passover (at the end of March or beginning 
of April ; a memorial of the Exodus from Egypt), the Feast 
of Weeks or of First-fruits (about Whitsuntide, the festival 
of the first harvest and of the Law), the great Feast of Atone- 
ment (at the end of September, expiation for the whole people), 
the Feast of Booths (at the end of September and beginning 
of October, the festival of the second harvest and a memorial 
of the forty years in the wilderness), the Feast of Purim (at 
the end of February or the beginning of March ; cf. the book 
of Esther). 



8 UNITY OF THE CHURCH 

Whether they were first used during the Exile, or 
immediately afterwards, or on the other hand not 
until after the time of the Maccabees, is still a con- 
troverted question. It is enough for us that at 
the time of Jesus' appearance the synagogue and 
the Sabbath services were perfectly settled institu- 
tions. As regards the procedure in worship we 
shall go into greater detail in our next chapter. 
At present the important point is to make clear 
the way in which these synagogues, which existed 
in all Jewish communities, with their similar 
services, were certain to make for the union of 
the dispersed members of the Jewish nation, 
wherever they might be. 

In the synagogue the Jew found his Bible, 
the Old Testament. 

The collection, which had grown gradually in 
the post-exilic age, was closed as regards its main 
contents about the year 130, as we know from the 
Prologue to the work of Jesus ben Sirach. Of 
its three parts, the Law, the Prophets, the Hagio- 
grapha, i.e. sacred writings, or K'thuvim, i.e. 
writings, the third alone was still an uncertain 
quantity in the time of Jesus. This may easily 
be perceived in the fact that in the New Testament 



AND DISTINCTIONS WITHIN IT 9 

the writings of the Old Testament are usually 
spoken of as ' Law,' or ! Law and Prophets.' 1 
Several of the Hagiographa, for instance the book 
of Koheleth or the Preacher, seem to have been 
matters of dispute among the contemporaries of 
Jesus. The limits of the canon were not set 
with absolute certainty until the end of the first 
Christian century. The fact that various ad- 
ditions to it were to be found among the Jews of 
Alexandria is not of any considerable significance. 
The part which was most important for the re- 
ligious life, the Law, and alongside that the 
Prophets, were found by the Jew everywhere, in 
the Greek version of Alexandria, known as the 
Septuagint. It was so called because, according 
to the legend, it had been translated by seventy- 
two learned Jews in an identical wording, although 
each had worked apart. Hebrew was now under- 
stood only by the learned ; the ordinary tongue 
used in Palestine was Syrian ; otherwise Greek 
was spoken. These Biblical writings, and above 
all the Law, had the highest authority. Every 
word was decisive. The doctrine of Inspiration 

1 An exception occurs in Luke 24 s7 , where the Alexandrian 
division is followed. 



10 UNITY OF THE CHURCH 

was formed. God had intimated to the authors 
through his spirit not merely the matter, but 
even the very wording. This idea took an especi- 
ally violent form in Alexandrian Judaism, where 
the conception had actually been reached which 
represents the sacred writer as a mere speaking- 
tube or pen-holder of the holy spirit. It was 
extended to the Greek translation. 

And this word of God was read every Sabbath 
day, section by section, in the synagogue. By 
means of this Bible the young life was trained in 
the schools, since school teaching meant essentially 
instruction in the Bible, together with the learning 
of prayers by heart. In the time of Jesus well- 
ordered boys' schools may already have been found, 
not only in the chief towns. Jesus himself gives 
us the decided impression that he had known his 
Bible well from schooldays onwards. Knowledge 
of the Bible and loyalty to the Bible was the mark 
of the pious as well as of the cultured Jew. How 
strong was the bond of union which the nation 
possessed in this book ! 

On the other hand we cannot speak of any fixed 
dogma in the time of Jesus. There was, no doubt, 
a general fundamental conviction that the observ- 



AND DISTINCTIONS WITHIN IT II 

ance of the Law was necessary to the attainment 
of salvation, but it had not been dogmatically 
formulated. If anything could be styled a fixed 
Jewish dogma, it would be monotheism, the belief 
in one God. In the * Shepherd of Hennas,' 
which in many respects betrays a Jewish influence, 
we read, ' Before all things believe that God is 
one.' 1 In Palestine such a belief was a matter of 
course ; but the Jews of the Diaspora, amid their 
Pagan surroundings, learned to realize in quite 
a new way the immense importance of this one 
article of faith, so that its counterpart, a belief 
in the satanic and demoniac origin of Pagan 
idolatry, became equally firmly established. The 
time when a Resurrection dogma might have 
been spoken of had already gone by. In the 
Judaism of Palestine, indeed, and in extensive 
circles in the Diaspora, it could still be maintained, 
but the Judaism of Alexandria, through the mouth 
of weighty representatives, had rejected the 
Resurrection. More might be said for a dogma 
of Retribution, since all the late Jewish writings, 
except Ecclesiastes, are at one in teaching Retribu- 
tion after death. Finally it must be pointed out 
1 Hennas, Commandments, I, i. 



12 UNITY OF THE CHURCH 

that the Jewish Church, in contrast, for instance, 
with the Christian Catholic Church, possessed no 
sacraments which guarantee salvation, and indeed 
no guarantee of any sort except the one. Every- 
body must fulfil the Law for himself, and sacrifice 
can only redeem certain definite derelictions. 
The solitary exception which might be adduced 
is the doctrine of propitiation through suffering, 
and especially through the death of the righteous 
and of martyrs, who had played so great a part 
since the time of the Maccabees 1 ; but it is doubtful 
how far this doctrine was known or accepted in 
the time of Jesus. The process by which it after- 
wards assumed great importance was then only 
beginning. 2 

But the most striking evidence of the force with 
which the Jewish people itself felt its unity as a 
Church is the movement towards propaganda, 
towards the dissemination of the Jewish religion 
among the Gentiles, a movement which was at 
work not only in the Diaspora, but also — if not 
with equal strength — in Palestine. It was an 

1 Cf. their remarkable prominence in the Revelation of 
John, 69-H, I2 u I4 is j e tc. 

2 The only passages which come into account are II Mace. 
7a 7 , IV Mace. 6 29 , 1722. 



AND DISTINCTIONS WITHIN IT 13 

outcome of their common and well-founded sense 
of the religious and moral superiority of Judaism 
to the whole of Paganism, even to the renowned 
Hellenistic culture. The Jew has something better 
than any heathen sage has ever offered, a pure 
faith in God, an earnest and strict morality. 
Unfortunately this just conviction often made use, 
in the literary propaganda, of very reprehensible 
methods. The Greek writers of the past, poets, 
philosophers, and historians, were made, in a 
whole series of coarse forgeries, to bear testimony 
to the truths of the Jewish faith. What an effect 
it must have if the Jewish religion was glorified 
in verses of the divine Homer or of Hesiod, if 
even ancient historians had drawn attention to 
this incomparable people ! Above all the Greek 
philosopher of widest influence, the great Plato, 
was pressed into the cause. The Jews did not 
shrink from representing him, together with 
Heraclitus, Pythagoras, and others, as a disciple 
of Moses, and they maintained in all seriousness 
that Greek philosophy had received its best 
strength from the Jewish religion. In order to 
understand these strange doings we must always 
hold in mind the impression, from which the Jew 



14 UNITY OF THE CHURCH 

could never free himself, that the loftiest utter- 
ances of Greek philosophers about God and 
morality were to be found in his own religion in 
greater clearness and certainty, surrounded with 
the sheen of divine revelation. They seemed 
to him but a weak echo of the pristine diapason. 
And this not merely assumed but real superiority 
of the Jewish religion and morality had a mighty 
effect upon others. It was met on the Pagan side 
by the stronger and stronger longing of expiring 
Antiquity for religious satisfaction, the hunger for 
revelation, true, certain, divine revelation. What 
a great work of preparation had been done by 
the post-Aristotelean philosophy, with its ever- 
increasing interest in religious problems ! What 
utter disintegration had befallen the old, naive, 
popular conceptions ! What an effect the Greek 
translation of the Old Testament must have had, 
by means of which it was possible to gain a real 
insight into the ancient, sacred literature of the 
Jews ! As a result of all this the Jewish pro- 
paganda met with a remarkable welcome. Wher- 
ever there were Jewish communities a circle of 
adherents, especially women, soon clustered around 
them. Philo says of the Jewish Law, ' It attracts 



AND DISTINCTIONS WITHIN IT 15 

and converts all, barbarians and Greeks, dwellers 
on the continent and islanders, races of the East 
and the West, Europeans, Asiatics, the whole 
inhabited world from one end to the other.' The 
new adherents were called * proselytes ' — literally, 
' new-comers.' 

The current distinction which we learned at 
school between ' Proselytes of the Gate ' and 
* Proselytes of Righteousness n did not arise 
until much later, and has nothing to do with 
another distinction, which must be recognized 
in the time of Jesus. The Proselytes were those 
Gentiles who received circumcision, underwent a 
purificatory immersion and made a propitiatory 
sacrifice, and in this way actually became Jews. 
They can never have been very numerous. We 
must distinguish from them another class, ' those 
that feared God,' that is to say those Gentiles 
who attended the synagogue, accepted mono- 
theism, and also observed certain parts of the 
Law, such as the command of the Sabbath. They 
existed in great numbers, and formed the chief 
result of the Jewish propaganda. At this point 

1 Aliens resident in Palestine ; and Gentiles who had 
become Jews. 



l6 UNITY OF THE CHURCH 

we must at least refer to the enormous importance 
of these ' God-fearing ' people for the Christian 
mission. Paul, on his missionary journeys, made 
true disciples among those adherents of Judaism. 
They prepared a fostering soil for Christian ideas. 
And these ' God-fearing ' men had not those 
obstinate prejudices which characterized the Jews. 
The extent to which the missionary movement was 
astir even amid the Judaism of Palestine at that 
time is evinced by the saying of Jesus, that the 
Pharisees compassed sea and land to make one 
proselyte. 1 This movement towards expansion 
was at length crippled by the growth of fanaticism 
hostile to Rome, and finally by the unrestrained 
bitterness of feeling which prevailed after the 
fall of Jerusalem. 

By this propaganda, together with the exclusive- 
ness of the Jews and their claim to religious and 
moral superiority, that anti-Semitic feeling was 
engendered which deepened into passionate perse- 
cutions of the Jews, and is well known to us in 
Greek and Roman writers. Tacitus has given us 
a celebrated picture of the Jews in the fifth book 
of his History. He depicts them indeed as the 
1 Matt. 23 15 . 



AND DISTINCTIONS WITHIN IT 1J 

most repulsive race, the most despicable section 
of the subjugated peoples, and throughout all his 
remarks there breathes such a note of disdain that 
they give us the best possible measure of the 
embittered feeling of that age. Judaism was 
actually felt as a dangerous power. But amid it 
all we can clearly perceive the impression from 
which even the Gentiles could not escape, that in 
spite of its dispersion over the globe the Jewish 
people formed a spiritual unity, which pressed 
victoriously forward. 

Up to this point we have fixed our regard 
exclusively upon the factors which prove the 
ecclesiastical unity of the Judaism of that time* 
Nevertheless we may take it for granted that here, 
as everywhere in life, we shall find certain differ- 
ences within the unity itself. 

We have already had occasion to hint at differ- 
ences between the Jews in and outside Palestine, 
with reference, for instance, to belief in the 
Resurrection. Now we must lay direct emphasis 
on the fact that considerable divergences from the 
Judaism of Palestine were developed among the 
Jews of the Diaspora, not merely on their whole 
outer mode of life — as in constant intercourse 

c 



l8 UNITY OF THE CHURCH 

with Gentiles, exclusive use of the Greek language, 
preponderance of the mercantile profession — but 
also in religion. Much of what was still in full 
vigour in Palestine had perforce, amid heathen 
surroundings, to give way — regulations of the 
Law, requirements of worship, part of which, such 
as a number of precepts concerning purification, 
could only be carried out when the Temple was 
accessible. Some elements, again, which existed 
in Palestine, came out into special prominence 
through contrast with an utterly dissimilar en- 
vironment — for instance, monotheism and the 
moral demands. In this way, gently and insen- 
sibly, there came to pass a remarkable simplification 
of the religion. The legal and ceremonial part was 
not indeed disavowed, but its demands on a number 
of matters necessarily fell into the background, 
while the numerous separate religious conceptions 
tended to crystallize around certain prominent 
points. It is obvious that the Jews outside 
Palestine were much more exposed to foreign 
influences than those of Palestine. Nevertheless 
these Jews of the Diaspora remained Jews, felt 
themselves to be Jews, strictly observed the 
ceremonial law, kept their Sabbath and their 



AND DISTINCTIONS WITHIN IT 19 

feasts. So far as we know there was only one 
point in the Diaspora, Alexandria, where the 
difference grew really deep. The fourth book of 
the Maccabees, the Wisdom of Solomon, Aristo- 
bulus, and, above all, Philo show us that there were 
circles among the Alexandrian Jews which had 
entered into so close an alliance with Greek culture 
that we often do not know whether we are dealing 
with Jews or Greeks. True, even a man like 
Philo did not wish to be anything but a Jew ; his 
philosophy takes the form of an explanation of 
the Mosaic law ; but it really was something new, 
an attempt to unite Jewish religion and Greek 
culture, which did not do justice to either. It is 
not our task to deal more closely with these 
Alexandrian Jews and their views. That has 
been done in another book in this series. 1 They 
do not concern the religion with which Jesus came 
in contact. It is possible, to me it seems even 
probable, that through their means Greek thoughts 
occasionally percolated through to the Jews in 
Palestine, but this process cannot be certainly 
traced. It is conceivable, for instance, that Jesus' 

1 ' The Preparation for Christianity in Greek Philosophy/ 
by Prof. Pfleiderer, pp. 60-66. 



20 UNITY OF THE CHURCH 

saying, ' God alone is good,' 1 was connected in 
this way with the Greek idea of God as the highest 
perfection. But on such points we cannot be 
certain. On the whole it cannot be shown that 
Alexandria influenced Jesus ; it was afterwards, 
on the other hand, of world-wide importance in 
the development of Christian theology. 

If we turn our gaze upon the Judaism of 
Palestine, which, besides being the only Judaism 
which affects Jesus, was also the real centre of 
gravity of the Jewish religion, we find here also a 
number of distinctions which must be recognized. 
The circles which dominate the religious and 
ecclesiastical life are not, as might have been 
expected, the priests, but the theologians s for 
that, more than anything else, is what the ' scribes ' 
are. A learned acquaintance with the Mosaic 
law is their profession. But since the Law is also 
the book of ordinary jurisprudence these men are 
also the jurists, the lawyers of their time. It is 
true that the Law, in this sense, was to be found 
in the five books of Moses, but it must be applied 
to the needs of the present time ; and this opened 
out a rich field of work for learned acumen. In 
x Mark io 18 . 



AND DISTINCTIONS WITHIN IT 21 

this way through the labours of the scribes there 
was gradually formed a new customary law 
alongside the written Law, the so-called Halacha, 
' what is usual.' This new tradition professed to 
be no more than an exposition and application of 
the letter of the Law, an exposition for which 
quite definite rules, formulated by the scribe 
Hillel, were introduced. But in reality it was an 
extension of the Law, such as tended more and 
more to thrust the scripture itself into the back- 
ground, and was of the highest importance, be- 
cause it kept touch with the requirements of 
practical life. At first a merely oral tradition, it 
was afterwards reduced to writing ; the fact that 
it was said to have been handed down from the 
time of Moses is the clearest evidence of the high 
value ascribed to it. Since the scribes were 
chained to the sacred text, they always laboured 
under a certain constraint, which could only be 
overcome by the most arbitrary methods of 
exegesis. Those parts of the Old Testament 
which are not of a legal character were more 
freely worked over ; the scribes simply read into 
the text what the views of a later age demanded. 
For instance, the course of past history was 



22 UNITY OF THE CHURCH 

depicted as, according to present ideas, it ought 
to have run ; an excellent example of this method 
is to be found within the Old Testament itself, in 
the two books of the Chronicles, as compared with 
the books of Samuel. The moral and religious 
utterances of the sacred scripture were treated 
in the same way. They were twisted or supple- 
mented until they conformed to modern concep- 
tions. The whole of this transformation and 
adornment of the non-legal parts of scripture was 
called Haggada, ' narration.' By means of this 
Mishna — literally ■ repetition,' in the sense of 
* teaching ' — as set forth in the Halacha and 
Haggada, the customary law and the new, imagi- 
native narration, the Old Testament was more 
and more thickly overgrown with the creeping 
plants of tradition and human ordinances. A 
fateful development ! The piety which was built 
upon this tradition could not escape being as arti- 
ficial, mechanical, fantastic, and often puerile as its 
foundation. Jesus felt this very clearly, and ex- 
pressed himself with extreme severity against the 
tradition : ' Right well do you repudiate the com- 
mandment of God, to keep your own tradition.' 1 
1 Mark 7 9 ; the whole section, 7 1 - 15 , should be read. 



AND DISTINCTIONS WITHIN IT 23 

The guardians of this portentous growth were the 
scribes ; and at the time of Jesus' appearance 
their influence dominated the people at all points. 
This was the outcome of a long historical process. 
In the post-exilic Jewish community, at the 
beginning of which the learning of Ezra stands 
prominently forth, piety and wisdom had gradually 
become merged and confounded. The * pious 
sage ' displaced the prophet. The more definitely 
post-exilic Judaism, which gathered about the 
Law, became a book-religion, the greater the im- 
portance which the learned man, the sage, must 
gain. And even though in the sayings of Jesus, 
son of Sirach, this wisdom still showed a free 
outlook and wide horizon, it was inevitable that 
it should grow narrower and narrower. In the 
time of Jesus the man who knows the Law is the 
only true sage. From the close of the Maccabean 
period particular names among these scribes begin 
to stand out more clearly. The most renowned 
are Hillel and Shammai, heads of contrasted 
schools, and contemporaries of Jesus. The differ- 
ences between the two are by no means formidable ; 
they have to do with trifles, which seem to us 
ridiculous — for instance, the question whether on 



24 UNITY OF THE CHURCH 

a feast-day a ladder, which is leaning against a 
dovecot, may be carried across to another dovecot 
— but they show into what dreariness and deadness 
a religion under such leadership must fall, how the 
life of it must simply be crushed out. Hillel was, 
on the whole, the milder of the two ; he also 
advocated the mission to the Gentiles ; Shammai 
was more severe. Besides these two the teacher 
of the apostle Paul, Gamaliel, is especially well 
known to us through the Acts of the Apostles. 1 

The scribes often gathered around them in the 
schoolroom a large number of pupils, whom they 
instructed thoroughly, free of charge. (This 
regulation was, however, evaded.) 2 Here it was 
that the new generation of learning was reared. 
The ideal was to engrave in the pupils' memory 
the exact words of the Master. To our way of 
thinking the instruction, with its eternal repeti- 
tion, was mechanical, and ill designed to develop 
individual character. The influence of the scribes, 
again, extended far beyond the walls of the 
schoolroom. As experts in the current law they 
had in their hands, as a rule, the decision of actual 

1 ActS 223 ; c f. 5 34.39. 

2 Jesus even reproaches them with greed of gain ; e.g., 
Mark 12*°, Matt. 2326. 



AND DISTINCTIONS WITHIN IT 25 

cases in the workaday world ; x they had a leading 
voice in the Synagogue. Wherever, in fact, 
advice was needed in questions which must be 
decided by means of the Old Testament their 
assistance was sought. They were treated every- 
where with the utmost deference, and addressed 
as Rabbi, ' my master,' which subsequently became 
an actual title. Many resigned themselves very 
readily to such marks of esteem, or even demanded 
them. Beyond all doubt the picture which Jesus 
gives is painted from the life : ' They love the first 
couch at banquets and the first seat in the syna- 
gogue and the salutations in public squares, and 
to be addressed by people as " my master." ' 2 
In fact, then, the remark of Jesus is not too 
strongly phrased, ' the scribes and the Pharisees 
have set themselves on the chair of Moses.' 3 

Jesus here makes mention, beside the scribes, 
of another special group, that of the Pharisees. 
Over and over again in the gospels we find the 
scribes and Pharisees together. And the con- 
nexion between the two is of the closest, even 
though they do not coincide. ' Scribe ' is the more 

1 Even in the highest Jewish Court, the Sanhedrin, they had 
a preponderating influence. 

2 Matt. 236 sq. 3 Matt. 232. 



26 UNITY OF THE CHURCH 

inclusive term. There certainly were scribes who 
belonged to another group whose acquaintance 
we shall make, that of the Sadducees. The 
Pharisees are the people who desire, in daily life, 
to follow exactly the directions of the scribes, the 
specifically ' religious ' folk, the ' godly ' of that 
age :• but — in sharp contrast to the godly of past 
times, who had been oppressed by the rich and by 
evildoers — now the ruling class. Their chief task 
was to carry out, in the strictest and most scru- 
pulous manner, the requirements of the Law 
together with the whole oral tradition, in the 
form which the labour of the scribes had given it. 
These ' godly ' were regarded by the people as 
something set apart, as patterns of godliness : a 
fact which is proved by the name ' Pharisees,' 
which was probably attached to them by op- 
ponents. It means the ' separated,' that is, those 
who are distinguished from the bulk of the people 
by being peculiarly pure and godly. They called 
themselves Haberim, ' comrades,' and this name 
shows that they did not recognize every Jew as 
a comrade ; x the answer they gave to the question, 
8 Who is my neighbour ? ' 2 was this ; ' The group 
1 As the Old Testament enjoins. 2 Luke io 29 . 



AND DISTINCTIONS WITHIN IT 2J 

of those who realize most strictly the ideal of legal 
purity and piety.' (According to Josephus this 
group numbered six thousand.) They were con- 
scious of being the elite of the people. It is self- 
evident that this must often have led to hypo- 
critical arrogance. The extremely sharp polemic of 
Jesus against the Pharisees 1 has indeed had such 
an effect that, to the popular mind, a Pharisee 
and a hypocrite are one and the same thing. But 
we must be on our guard against a mistaken 
generalization. It is certain that the piety of 
many Pharisees was of a thoroughly earnest kind ; 
they spared themselves not at all. Any other 
verdict would do grievous injustice not only to 
men like Hillel and Gamaliel, but also to innumer- 
able others. But this only brings out more clearly 
the fact that those types which forced them- 
selves to the front in public life, carried piety to 
market and demanded the admiration of the crowd, 
were justly scourged by Jesus as hypocrites. 
There is also no reason to doubt that at the 
time of Jesus' ministry the morbid and repulsive 
forms of Pharisaic godliness were so preponderant 
that, in a general review, no others needed to be 
1 Cf. especially Matt. 23. 



28 UNITY OF THE CHURCH 

considered. At the same time the piercing eye of 
Jesus could perceive and duly estimate the danger 
of arrogance and vainglory to which this ideal of 
piety must under all circumstances be exposed. 
In other matters, besides their conspicuous 
legalism, the Pharisees stood as representatives of 
orthodox belief ; this might indeed be deduced 
from their essential character ; they shared all 
the conceptions of their time with regard to angels 
and spirits, and believed in the resurrection of 
the dead. 1 The very questionable account of 
them in Josephus 2 gives no sure ground for 
deciding what they thought concerning the divine 
providence and human free will. In any case the 
Pharisees were not a special religious school in 
Judaism, though they have often been so repre- 
sented, but simply a party which stood for the 
ideal of the legalistic Jews, as the course of 
development had shaped it — the ideal, in fact, for 
which every Jew ought to stand. It is also a 
mistake to regard the Pharisees as a political 
party. Their history, it is true, often shows 

1 Acts 23 8 . 

2 Josephus tries, in accordance with the taste of his readers,- 
to depict the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and Zealots as 
philosophical schools. 



AND DISTINCTIONS WITHIN IT 20, 

them involved in political affairs. The earliest 
beginnings known to us of what afterwards 
became the Pharisaic group, namely the so-called 
Assidaeans (* the pious ') of the Maccabean time, 
stood in close connexion with the fighters for 
freedom, but only because the existence of 
legalistic piety was at stake. After the founda- 
tion, however, of a Maccabean dynasty, which 
had the conduct of politics in its own hands, the 
Assidaeans severed the connexion, and a bitter 
opposition arose between the two, as we learn 
especially from the Psalms of Solomon. This 
began under Hyrcanus, and reached its climax 
under Alexander Jannaeus. But the Pharisees 
were able to endure the government of Herod, 
and even the Roman overlordship. They had no 
necessary concern with politics. They would 
tolerate any kind of rule, so long as no hindrance 
was offered to the exercise of their godliness. A 
group, however, which was in a certain sense an 
offshoot from them, 1 pursued purely political 
ends ; these were the Zealots, 2 who sought, 
weapon in hand, to bring about by force the great 

1 The Pharisee Zadduk was one of its founders. 

2 The ' men of violence,' Matt, n 12 , are Zealots. 



30 UNITY OF THE CHURCH 

change, the opening of a new era, the coming of 
the kingdom of God. But these revolutionaries, 
who set up the false Messiahs that led to the 
catastrophe of 70 a.d., must by no means be looked 
on as analogous to the Pharisees. Their develop- 
ment led, from the starting-point, in a quite 
different direction. 

The Pharisees stood in contrast on the one hand 
to the common people and on the other hand to 
the Sadducees. The folk from whom the Com- 
rades distinguished themselves were the 'Am-ha- 
ares, the ' people of the land.' The Pharisee looked 
with disdain on the indifferent, uncultivated 
throng, which did not even know the Law and the 
Tradition, not to say observe them both punctili- 
ously. It was the ' accursed multitude.' 1 Thus 
the expression 'Am-ha-ares,' which is used in the 
Old Testament, without any dishonourable associa- 
tion, of the people as distinct from the government, 
became a term of abuse, which was afterwards ap- 
plied even to individuals — ' he is an e Am-ha-ares.' 
This rabble, then, included all the uncultured and 
indifferent, but especially the notorious sinners 
and the hated ' publicans,' who had debased 
1 John 7*». 



AND DISTINCTIONS WITHIN IT 31 

themselves to become tools of the foreign govern- 
ment in the collection of taxes. This explains the 
huge offence which the Pharisees took at the 
association of Jesus with the dregs of the people. 
Such disdain was to be found, at first, only on 
the side of the Pharisees. The lower strata of 
the people seem nevertheless to have looked up 
with a sort of timid admiration to the guardians 
of the Law and of godliness. But little by little 
a sense of irritation and hostility grew up, natur- 
ally enough, on the other side. The evidence for 
this, however, belongs to a later time. 

The Pharisees were not only contrasted with 
those below them but also with those above them, 
for they stood in opposition to the Sadducees, 
who represented the priestly nobility. These were 
members of the leading sacerdotal families, and 
their name of Sadducees, ' those belonging to 
Sadduk,' was most probably intended to imply 
descent from the old priestly family of Zadok. 1 
They were probably not united into a special 
group until the formation of the Pharisaic party 
gave occasion for such a union. Not that that 
party was in itself antagonistic to the priests ; 
1 Cf. I Kings 235. 



32 UNITY OF THE CHURCH 

on the contrary, it performed all legal duties 
towards them with the utmost fidelity. Still it 
is easily intelligible that, in view of the growing 
influence of the scribes and Pharisees, the old 
noble families, from which the higher priests 
were drawn, felt compelled to take up a hostile 
attitude, since they saw their own leading position 
in danger. Since the Exile the high-priest had 
been at the same time the ruler of the people, 
and the foremost of his colleagues had been the 
diplomatic body, who conducted political affairs. 
It was highly important for them to keep the 
people under their influence, and any diminution 
of it threatened their position. Hence arose their 
opposition to the Pharisees, which again shaped 
the course of the priests themselves ; for it is this 
which explains the fact that they recognized only 
the written Law, and rejected the whole tradition 
of which the Pharisees were champions. For the 
same reason they did not accept the new ortho- 
doxy, especially the resurrection of the dead, nor 
yet the belief in angels and demons. As regards 
religion, then, they certainly stood at the time of 
Jesus behind their age, and below the level of the 
popular faith ; in other matters, however, they 



AND DISTINCTIONS WITHIN IT 33 

were more far-sighted, and, it must be confessed, 
more worldly. They tried to live in peace with 
the Roman dominion, and had no reason for 
desiring a change. They were also the party 
most accessible to contemporary culture, though 
not in the same degree as formerly in the Graeco- 
Syrian time, when they had even looked with 
complacency on the attempts of such a man as 
Antiochus Epiphanes. That was no longer pos- 
sible, since in Jesus' time the Pharisees had already 
gained such a grasp of the reins that the Sadducees 
must always take them into account, if they 
wished to be any longer tolerated by the people. 
The power which they still possessed lay simply 
in the prestige of the Temple worship, which the 
Law enjoined, and in political affairs, which no 
one else understood. When both of these came 
to an end in 70 a.d. the Sadducees disappeared 
also, without leaving a trace, while the scribes 
remained, and enjoyed an undivided supremacy. 
We have now only one more group to consider, 
a group which stands insulated like a foreign 
body in the midst of Judaism, the only one which 
breaks the uniformity of the Church, namely, the 
Essenes. The name probably means ' the pious.' 

D 



34 UNITY OF THE CHURCH 

Fifteen years ago it was possible to doubt the 
existence of this group, or at least to despair of 
gaining any certain knowledge about them. The 
credibility of the most important authorities, 
Philo and Josephus, was at that time grievously 
shaken ; but to-day they may be regarded as 
substantially reinstated. We must, however, in 
Philo's case, allow for the way in which he tries 
to exhibit the Essenes as approaching his own 
philosophy and method, and in that of Josephus 
for the somewhat strong Greek colouring which, 
in deference to his Graeco-Roman public, he throws 
over them. A critical examination of these sources 
leads us to characterize the Essenes as a mon- 
astic order, a fellowship with a special type of 
worship, a mystic society. On Jewish soil they 
are the only example of monasticism, such as is 
to be found in other religions, for instance the 
Egyptian, Buddhist, and Christian. There were 
about four thousand of them in the towns and 
villages of Palestine, men only, living in special 
houses, in order to separate themselves from their 
compatriots and devote themselves to a pure 
and holy life. The novice must serve a probation 
of three years before being admitted, by a strict 



AND DISTINCTIONS WITHIN IT 35 

vow, into the order, in which all the members 
were bound together, under the rule of superiors, 
by community of goods — all private possessions 
were given up ; money, food, and clothing were 
held in common — and by a definite regulation of 
the daily life. Field work and handiwork were 
framed about with prayer, ablutions, and refec- 
tions. Their leading conceptions were simplicity, 
temperance, and, above all, purity ; they wore a 
white habit, bathed often, avoided all pollution 
with the utmost care, and rejected marriage — 
probably to escape the defilement incident to 
association with the other sex. In certain ways 
the Essenes present the aspect of a separate 
community of worshippers ; they took no part in 
the Jewish sacrificial worship, and rejected sacri- 
fice altogether ; baths and repasts played a great 
part in their life : both were sacred acts. Before 
every meal eaten in common a cold bath must 
be taken. Novices were not admitted to the 
bath for the first year. The purpose of these 
baths has nothing to do with the ordinary cleansing 
power of water, but with a mysterious, sacra- 
mental consecration of the whole man through 
its means. This explains how in cases where 



36 UNITY OF THE CHURCH 

no external uncleanliness came into question, as 
when a full member of the order happened to 
touch a novice, the cold bath was enjoined. In 
the same way the common repast, prepared by 
the priest of the order, and partaken of in festal 
attire, was an act of worship. No stranger might 
take part in it. It was opened and closed with 
prayer. Solemn stillness reigned, as at some 
mystery. These acts of worship all point in the 
direction of a mystic society ; and finally we must 
mention the secret writings and secret doctrine, 
which belong to the essence of a mystic society, 
and were also found among the Essenes. It is a 
very vexed question how this remarkable product 
of the Jewish religion came into being. All that is 
certain at present is that, though the fundamental 
character of the Essenes was Jewish, there are 
unmistakable traces of the influence of foreign 
religions. The Jewish element is seen in their 
monotheism, their reverence for the Mosaic Law, 
their strict observance of the Sabbath. Even their 
punctilious concern for purity connects them closely 
with the Pharisaic party. On the other hand 
their rejection of marriage, anointing, and sacrifice 
is not Jewish, nor yet their doctrine of the im- 



AND DISTINCTIONS WITHIN IT 37 

mortality of the soul ; least of all their invoca- 
tion of the sun. It cannot be doubted that what 
they beheld in the sun was the divine splendour, 
and this idea underlies their anxious precautions 
not to offend it by lack of reverence. It is ques- 
tionable whether their repudiation of slavery and of 
the oath can conceivably be Jewish. We are not 
yet able to say with certainty whence the foreign 
elements to be observed among the Essenes were 
derived. Some investigators speak of contact 
with Greek (particularly neo- Pythagorean and 
Orphic) religion, others of the influence of oriental 
religions, especially the Persian, Babylonian, and 
Mandaean. This second theory has already se- 
cured a preponderance of authority. The pos- 
sibility of such a phenomenon as that of the 
Essenes in Palestine is one of the strongest proofs 
of the influence of foreign religions, and the degree 
in which it was exerted even in the mother-land 
of Judaism. This must be kept in mind when we 
consider certain points which we have not yet 
touched. 

Now that we have finished our survey of the 
differences which existed in Judaism, we come 
back to the unity with which we started. The 



38 UNITY OF THE CHURCH 

question at once arises along what paths the 
doctrine and piety of this Jewish Church took its 
course. The exposition given in the following 
chapter deals chiefly with the point of view of 
the scribes and Pharisees, but only because theirs 
was the chief pervasive and directive force within 
the church. 



Chapter II 

DOCTRINE AND PIETY IN THE CHURCH 

The two poles of all religion are God and manj 
We will ask first of all what was the nature of the 
Jewish belief in God, as it had taken shape in the 
thought and piety of the Church at the time of 
Jesus. The most striking fact is that God had 
been set, as it were, at a remote distance, and 
severed from man, and from the world at large, 
by a deep chasm. He sits enthroned, unapproach- 
able, in the heavens. At the thought of God 
the pious soul is filled with holy awe. The con- 
tinual effacement of those ingloriously human 
lineaments in God which were to be read of in 
the Old Testament can be understood and de- 
fended as a merit, implicit in a more spiritual 
conception ; but the real far-removedness of God 
is seen in the fact that God's proper name, Jahweh, 



40 DOCTRINE AND PIETY IN THE CHURCH 

was used less and less in the post-exilic age, and 
at last might not be uttered at all. It became a 
secret name ; it was only used in the Temple 
worship. Instead of it general expressions such 
as the Holy, the Almighty, the Sublime, the 
Great, the Lord of Heaven, the Lord of Lords, 
the King of Kings, the Glory, the Great Majesty, 
were used, and also the simple word c Heaven.' 
This is the meaning of the word in Jesus' 
parable of the Prodigal Son : ' Father, I have 
sinned against heaven (that is, against God) 
and before thee.' 1 The ' Kingdom of God ' and 
the * Kingdom of Heaven ' in the Gospels are 
therefore the same thing. This extrusion of the 
old name of Jahweh, the pronunciation of which 
was then forgotten, was by no means an insig- 
nificant matter. With the personal name the 
personal nearness of God is lost. God grows 
paler, fainter, more remote. Belief in a present 
Deity, glad faith in a God that manifests himself 
in actual experience, is much more rarely to be 
found. Occasionally, in times of national exalta- 
tion, it shines forth with its ancient power, as for 
example during the Maccabean war of liberty, 2 
iLuke 15I8 and ». 2 Cf . I Mace. 



DOCTRINE AND PIETY IN THE CHURCH 41 

but these are exceptional moments. 1 As a rule 
God stands far aloof from the present time. No 
doubt this is closely connected with the fact 
that the present time was nearly always so sad 
and gloomy that none could summon up courage 
to hold such a faith. Indeed, even the old faith 
in the past, faith in the ' God of the fathers ' — 
a favourite term — who had manifested himself in 
the choosing and historical guidance of the Jewish 
people, in the Covenant of Sinai and the giving 
of the Law, in the worship and the promises, 2 is 
rather an accepted heritage, piously transmitted, 
than a living good, fruitful for the life of to-day. 
The roots of the belief in God are now planted 
altogether in the future. Its fundamental note 
is, God will reveal himself out of the heavens, 
God will save, will raise from the dead, will judge 
the world. The time till then is, as Paul phrases 
it, a time which God overlooks, a time of divine 
long-suffering. And so, instead of a powerful 
confidence in the felt nearness of God, speculation 
spreads her wings, to speed with the help of 

1 The Psalms of Solomon may also be named in this 
connexion. 

2 Rom. o>. 



42 DOCTRINE AND PIETY IN THE CHURCH 

phantasy into the far distance ; not only the dis- 
tant future, but also the beginnings of time * 
since the belief in a divine Creator, which expresses 
itself in glowing colours, by means sometimes of 
grotesque and fantastic images, is characteristic 
of late Judaism. 1 The reality of the cleft be- 
tween God and man is shown by the different 
attempts which were made to bridge it over. In 
the first place the angels must be mentioned ; 
they came between God and man, not side by side 
with God. Monotheism remains unimpaired ; 2 
but God is himself so remote, so unapproachable, 
that he has intercourse with the world through 
other beings. In this way the angels gain an in- 
dependent importance. The very ancient belief 
in angels, which the prophets had forced into the 
background, revived more and more during the 
post-exilic period, and stands in its fullest vigour 
and elaboration at the time of Jesus. 

Some of their names are known, such as Michael, 
Gabriel, Uriel, Raphael. They are arranged in 
classes, such as the four, six, or seven archangels 

1 Especially of the Ethiopic Enoch, the Slavonic Enoch, and 
Philo under the influence of non- Jewish ideas. 

2 This received expression in names like the Living, the 
Eternal, the Lord of spirits. 



DOCTRINE AND PIETY IN THE CHURCH 43 

(to which the four here named belong), the cher- 
ubim and seraphim, and those dominions, prin- 
cipalities and powers which we meet in the New 
Testament. 1 Their occupations are known ; and 
here simple old popular conceptions come again 
to life. Originally the stars were regarded as 
angels, and this is the meaning of the phrase ' the 
host of heaven.' This conception endured, or 
was only slightly modified, in the sense that the 
angels are in charge of the stars ; they are the 
heavenly watchers. And like heaven, the earth 
too has its angels, yes, every part of it, wind and 
waves, thunder and lightning, beasts and plants. 
In this doctrine the oldest popular belief, according 
to which everything is rilled with mysterious life, 
every tree and every fountain, celebrates its 
resurrection. And just as individual men have 
their guardian angels, 2 so in a special degree have 
the nations. Persia and Greece have their angels 
as well as the Jewish people. It is natural that 
belief should cling with peculiar fondness to the 
angel of the Jews. His name is Michael. He is 
the celestial secretary, who represents the nation, 
fights for the Jews, stands with them in the last 
1 E.g., Rom. 8 38 ; Eph. 121 ; Col. i 16 . 2 Matt. i8i°. 



44 DOCTRINE AND PIETY IN THE CHURCH 

judgment. Finally, the nature of the angels is 
also known. They are celestial, spiritual beings, 
created by God, similar to man, but not subject to 
human needs. Besides the good angels there are 
also bad ones, about which we shall speak later. 
The most important point is that the religious 
longing to perceive the divine power in daily life 
is satisfied by means of the angels. They stand be- 
tween man and God, who retires into the distance. 
A like part is played by certain strange, hybrid 
forms, about which it is hard to say whether they 
are personal beings or abstractions. They were 
especially in favour in Alexandrian circles, but 
were also well known in the Judaism of Palestine. 
The Wisdom, Word, Glory or Shechina and Spirit 
of God are intermediate beings of this kind. As 
early as in the Proverbs we read about Wisdom, 
1 Jahweh created me as the beginning of his ways, 
as the first of his works of old. I have been 
installed from everlasting. . . . Then I was at his 
side as a master-workman, day by day I was pure 
delight, sporting busily at all times before him, 
sporting upon his earth, and had my delight 
among the sons of men.' 1 Is this only a poetic, 

1 Prov. 822-31. 



DOCTRINE AND PIETY IN THE CHURCH 45 

artistic fancy, or does the writer intend to depict 
a personal being ? In any case the further 
development, which we can trace in Jesus Sirach^ 
the Wisdom of Solomon, and Philo, speaks defi- 
nitely in favour of the latter. A similar signific- 
ance attached — in Palestine, however, only at a 
later period — to the Word of God, especially the 
creative Word, conceived in the light of Genesis i. 
An iridescent indefiniteness was still characteristic 
of these figures. In a number of cases we cannot 
decide whether they are to be taken for mere 
attributes and activities of God or for independent 
beings. But there is an unmistakable tendency 
towards independent life. That peculiar ambiguity 
has its intrinsic justification in the fact that the pur- 
pose of these beings is twofold, on the one hand to 
establish a communication with God, on the other 
hand to prevent a direct connexion between God 
and the World. Accordingly they appear some- 
times as aspects of the divine being, sometimes as 
independent. From time to time in Jewish 
literature the Law, that centre of the doctrine of 
piety in the Church, and indeed of Jewish life in 
general, is treated almost in the same way as an 
independent, spiritual entity. It is the embodied 



46 DOCTRINE AND PIETY IN THE CHURCH 

Will of God, his embodied Wisdom, and here too 
it so falls out that this great something, which is 
the ruler of life, has a substantiality of its own. 
God himself retires behind it. It is specially 
recorded that at the giving of the Law, alongside 
other marvels, angelic powers took part. 1 Super- 
natural glory surrounds the form of Moses, the 
lawgiver. A whole legendary cycle has been spun 
about this greatest of men, who up to the time of 
Jesus was looked on also as a prophet, and, as in 
the case of Elijah, it ends with an ascension into 
heaven. 2 Whether we turn to Jesus Sirach, Philo, 
or Josephus, all are at one in the glorification of 
the Law. This leads us immediately to the 
attitude adopted by the Jew towards God. 

God, as lord and king, has given his people the 
Thora, the Law. Accordingly the highest task 
of the Jew consists in submission and obedience 
to this Law. And since for the oriental mind the 
king is a despot, and his subjects are his servants, 
so also the Jew has not only to obey the Law 
where he understands it, but, like a menial, 

1 Acts 735 ; Heb. 22 ; Gal. 3 19 . 

2 The significance of these ascensions (cf. also that of Enoch) 
should be considered from the point of view of historical 
religion in connexion with the ascension of Jesus. 



DOCTRINE AND PIETY IN THE CHURCH 47 

blindly and at all points. This explains his tena- 
cious observance of the ceremonial prescriptions. 
Nobody could discover for what reason certain 
foods and drinks must be forbidden, why a dead 
person makes you ceremonially unclean, and a 
bath makes you ceremonially clean again. Even 
Jewish scribes have openly confessed so much. 
In all such questions there was but one answer ; 
it is the will of the heavenly king, whom we must 
obey. The genuinely oriental character of Jewish 
devotion showed itself in the quite especial zeal 
with which these ceremonial regulations were 
observed. In this respect the Diaspora does not 
lag behind the Judaism of Palestine. It was 
precisely in ceremonies, primarily in circumcision, 
in the strict observance of the Sabbath, in the 
numerous rules of diet and so forth, that the 
peculiarity of the Jew was to be found, which 
severed him so strikingly from the Gentile nations, 
and forced itself on their notice as a mark of 
difference. These rules, again, were pre-eminently 
the object of the labour of the scribes. It was 
one of their chief tasks to preserve faithfully all 
special injunctions, to build up general rules, to 
catch and bind the whole multiform, mobile life 



48 DOCTRINE AND PIETY IN THE CHURCH 

of the people in a network of such directions. 
This it is which, more than anything else, stamps 
upon later Judaism the character of narrowness, 
paltriness, and often of ridiculous futility. It 
had not always been so. Even in the proverbial 
wisdom of the Jews there still lived a consciousness 
that the Law has a greater boon to bestow, that 
its aim is to point the way to true morality. 
Certainly the ceremonial law had never been 
disregarded. The historical situation in the post- 
exilic period was what gave it its great importance ; 
it was a necessity, to ensure the existence of the 
community. The actual narrowing, the one-sided 
emphasis laid upon this side, was the result of the 
activity of the scribes. This was in the mind of 
Jesus when he said about them and about the 
Pharisees, ' They bind heavy burdens and lay 
them on men's shoulders, but they themselves 
will not move them with their finger.' 1 Under 
this yoke sighed the weary and heavy-laden, 
whom Jesus called to himself. 2 And yet they 
submit. It is the will of God, which must be 
obeyed : what more can be said ? It is well 
known with what tenacity and passionate energy 
iMatt. 23*. 2 Matt. ii28j$o. 



DOCTRINE AND PIETY IN THE CHURCH 49 

the Jews pressed on to this goal, even to the laying 
down of their lives ; how in time of war they let 
themselves be massacred rather than resist on 
the Sabbath ; with what unbending antagonism 
they opposed the attempts of Antiochus Epiphanes 
to introduce Greek customs by force ; and how in 
times of peace, especially under the Roman 
emperors, they struggled again and again to 
obtain such privileges as would allow them to 
live according to the Law. 

It was of especial and, beyond question, of 
fateful importance that the Mosaic Law was at 
the same time, in Palestine, the civil law. 1 All 
relations and conditions of public and private 
life were regulated in accordance with the Mosaic 
Law and the exposition of the Scribes. These 
formed the basis of decisions in the local courts, 
such as the Sanhedrin, the supreme court of 
justice in Jerusalem. The execution of capital 
punishment alone was reserved by the Romans. 2 
Even the most impossible laws to be kept in 

1 In the Diaspora matters were essentially different. As a 
rule, so far as they had no privileges, the Jews were obliged 
to conform to the law of the land. 

2 Still, a Gentile who forced his way into the inner court of 
the Temple was liable to the death penalty without conditions. 



50 DOCTRINE AND PIETY IN THE CHURCH 

operation, such as the remission of debts every 
seventh year, which would have destroyed all 
credit, remained in force, though they were 
deprived of their real meaning by the additions 
of the Scribes. But this close connexion between 
religious and civil law reacted fatally upon piety ; 
piety towards God was looked upon, in the main, 
as something juristic. In Judaism religion and 
law entered into a close alliance, to the grievous 
hurt of religion. The peculiar character of legal 
piety had already brought it about that atten- 
tion was directed and importance attached, more 
and more, to the single individual. In the pre- 
exilic period the individual could take shelter 
under the people, since God had made his cove- 
nant immediately with the people as a whole, 
but as the power of the Law grew individualism 
made its way also. For every man the question 
was whether he himself fulfilled the Law or not. 
The unity of the people is cleft in two ; on one 
side of the gulf stand the pious, on the other 
the godless — the great mass of the indifferent and 
lukewarm stand over against the elite of the 
serious. Indeed, it does not help the individual 
to belong to the group of the pious ; every one 



DOCTRINE AND PIETY IN THE CHURCH 51 

must be answerable for his own deeds. But this 
development of the idea of piety, which in itself 
is really progressive, was vitiated by the circum- 
stance that the relation of the single soul to God 
was regarded almost exclusively from a legal 
standpoint. God was looked upon, therefore, 
chiefly as a judge. It is true that the individual 
Jew in the time of Jesus speaks of God also as 
his father. In applying the name of father to God 
Jesus did nothing new. But, apart from the fact 
that use of this name in Jewish literature is not 
very frequent, 1 the glad, confident, childlike feeling 
which the name of father on the lips of Jesus im- 
plied is nowhere to be found. God is not thought 
of chiefly as father, but as judge. His great 
attribute is justice, understood now in the juristic 
sense. At one time justice, or righteousness, was 
the judgment of God sounding forth salvation, 
attesting his faithfulness towards himself and 
the people with which he had made a covenant. 
This meaning is prominent in the second Isaiah 
and in the Psalms. Justice and grace stood in 
the most intimate relation with one another. 
Now justice means the activity of the judge in 
1 The Wisdom of Solomon forms an exception. 



52 DOCTRINE AND PIETY IN THE CHURCH 

requiting or compensating according to the letter 
of the Law. The pious receive their reward, the 
impious their punishment. 1 True, mention is 
still often, indeed very often, made of the grace 
and mercy which the Almighty shows towards 
his feeble creatures ; the Wisdom literature seeks 
to combine grace and justice by the thought of 
the education of the individual ; but, taken as 
a whole, grace now stands as a second thing, 
alongside justice, in a wavering, uncertain posture.: 
The consequence for the pious man is that every- 
thing depends on his ability to stand uncon- 
demned in the just judgment of God, and if 
possible to gain his grace. Righteousness before 
God, justification — these are the concepts — in 
which Paul, that pupil of the Pharisees, frames 
his thought. But since God's will is only to be 
learned from his Law, it is now easy to under- 
stand the eager, sedulous solicitude of the Jew 
to observe this Law with scrupulous strictness ; 
and not only the Law itself, but also the whole 
appendix of tradition which professed to be derived 
from it. If possible he would do more than the 
Law commands. By supererogatory good deeds 
iCf. Rom. 2«. 



DOCTRINE AND PIETY IN THE CHURCH 53 

it is possible to win merit in the eyes of God. 
These views have been taken over directly by the 
Catholic Church. Piety is cankered through and 
through by the thought of reward. In the future 
judgment God has nothing to do but to give the 
Jew his due according to the letter of the Law, 
according to the preponderance of good deeds 
or bad, or any merit which he happens to have 
in hand. How extraordinarily deep-rooted this 
thought was in the time of Jesus is best seen in 
the fact that Jesus himself, whose inner feeling 
had completely escaped from such a scheme, 
often startles us by expressing his ideas in terms 
of reward and punishment. 

These ideas as a whole had necessarily a twofold 
effect on the mood of those who held them ; it 
oscillated between fear and presumption. The 
pious man has before his eyes the coming judgment 
day of God, when the dead shall arise and receive 
their sentence. Has he trod the way of life or 
of death? 1 Will he hold his own amid all the 
need, anxiety, and seduction of this present age ? 
At the end of his life will his account show a 

2 For the doctrine of the two ways, cf. e.g., 'Testament 
of the Twelve Patriarchs,' Asher, 1 ; Matt. 7 13 sq. 



54 DOCTRINE AND PIETY IN THE CHURCH 

balance on the credit side, a surplus of good deeds 
over bad ? Will he find grace before the severe 
judge ? Trembling and misgiving must seize the 
Jew, the best Jews most of all, at these thoughts ; 
such misgiving as speaks in the words of IV Ezra : 
' All that are born are deformed with impieties, 
full of sins, laden with guilt. It were much 
better for us, if after death we had not to enter 
into the judgment.' 1 Paul as a Pharisee, before 
his conversion to Christianity, must have tested 
all these feelings, as we learn from the Epistle 
to the Romans. 2 It is this quivering dread 
which engendered the penitential sense that is 
so markedly characteristic of later Judaism. It 
found expression in penitential ceremonies, prayers 
and psalms. The Jews are driven to penance by 
the consciousness of sin, and also, it must be 
granted, by sorrow under the sufferings which 
were still to some extent regarded, according to 
ancient Israelite belief, as a divine punishment. 
Penance consists above all things in contrition, 
repentance, confession, and is combined with 

1 IV Ezra 7™ sq. 

2 The celebrated description in Rom. 7 7 - 23 was written by 
the apostle in retrospect on his Jewish past, in contrast to 
his present life as a Christian. 



DOCTRINE AND PIETY IN THE CHURCH 55 

self-chastisement (fasting, mourning c in sack- 
cloth and ashes '). Penance is supposed to make 
atonement. 1 At the time of Jesus' ministry this 
state of mind must have been widely diffused. 
John the Baptist had sounded the call to repent- 
ance, with extraordinary success. Jesus had 
taken it up and made it the basis of his whole 
preaching ; this note is heard throughout ; but 
it is momentously transformed, and recalls the 
demands of the prophets. 2 Jesus turned his eyes 
from the externals of penance, and by repentance 
meant a change of spirit. But he found the 
conception, as well as the feeling, in the Judaism 
of his day. The terrors of the year 70 a.d. mightily 
strengthened the penitential feeling, so that it 
continues to play a leading part in the later Jewish 
theology. And the same misgiving which drove 
men to penance also urged the pious man into 
busy efforts to serve God by works. To do as 
much as possible, to exceed, if he could, the 
necessary measure — who knows, it might not be 
enough, after all ! This is, however, only one side 
of the matter. By the side of dread stands 

1 Ct. the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, Asher, 1. 
2 E.g., Ezekiel 18*1 ; Hosea io 1 * ; Jeremiah 4 3 . 



56 DOCTRINE AND PIETY IN THE CHURCH 

presumption. Outwardly, indeed, it is more 
prominent, since it was in churchly circles, among 
the pious, that it chiefly prevailed. The masses 
of the people, who sighed under the burden of the 
demands of the Law and the tradition of the 
fathers, men whose social circumstances left them 
neither time nor opportunity for the sedulous 
observance of such rules, can hardly have been 
inclined, as a rule, to such overweening assurance. 
But the pious, the Pharisees, who really put them- 
selves to the greatest trouble and could never do 
enough to satisfy themselves, often looked on 
their own performances with complacency, and 
disparaged others. The Gospels afford an in- 
exhaustible supply of instances. The form of 
the Pharisee who prays, ' God, I thank thee that 
I am not as the rest of men ... I fast twice in 
the week ; I give tithes of all that I possess,' 1 
is copied, in its vain self-glorification and arrogance 
direct from real life. With what contempt did 
the words about Jesus fall from such lips, ' the 
associate of publicans and sinners.' 2 This type 
of the pious Pharisee is incomparably depicted 
by Paul, when he says that he relies upon the Law, 

iLuke 18" sq. 2 Matt. n 19 . 



DOCTRINE AND PIETY IN THE CHURCH 57 

glories in God and knows his will, tests the differ- 
ences (between good and bad), being instructed 
by the Law, and is confident that he is a guide of 
the blind, a light to those that are in darkness, an 
instructor of the foolish, a teacher of infants. 1 
That same laborious zeal in the service of works 
which is born of dread of the judge serves on the 
other hand as a foundation for self-confidence 
and presumption. The superficiality which mea- 
sures itself by those whom it regards as worse 
engenders admiration of its own proficiency. The 
consciousness of piety poisons piety to the very 
marrow. 

While we have realized the destructive effect of 
the alliance between religion and law upon piety, 
we must not forget that morality was also griev- 
ously damaged. The one fact that the standard 
in moral matters as in all else was the written Law 
was, in itself, a source of grave detriment. In 
the Law the preponderant element was prohibition. 
Thus with regard to morality, as well as the rest, 
what was above all things laid down was what a 
man ought not to do. There is, in fact, no more 
significant acknowledgment of this state of things 

1 Rom. 217.20. 



58 DOCTRINE AND PIETY IN THE CHURCH 

than the formula delivered to us repeatedly by 
Jewish lips, c What thou wilt not that men do 
unto thee, do thou not unto another.' 1 It must 
be granted that this is the whole width of heaven 
apart from that word of Jesus which kindles the 
energy of moral action, c Whatsoever ye would 
that men should do to you, do ye unto them.' 2 
There was not, then, very much in the Law which 
could be applied in the manifold relations of life. 
The whole work of developing and refining the 
general principles, and to a certain extent that of 
giving them currency for use in daily life, was 
relegated to the individual, and so stood outside 
the Law, as a thing left to freedom, or rather to 
caprice. The Law contained so many specific 
demands that all cases not mentioned might ap- 
pear to be abandoned to the opinion of the 
individual. This explains why the Jewish pro- 
verbial wisdom treats the whole field of private 
morality from the standpoint of the sane, intelli- 
gent, worldly wisdom of a cultured man, who 
enquires about practical utility. Alongside the 
ecclesiastical, legal ethic there grew up, then, a 
utilitarian morality of independent importance, 
i E.g., by Hillel and Philo. 2 Matt. 712. 



DOCTRINE AND PIETY IN THE CHURCH 59 

which coheres but loosely with religion. Finally, a 
morality so closely connected with the Law was 
only considered binding between Jews and Jews, 
just as the Law had been given the Jews as their 
peculiar distinction. A few ethical directions in 
the Law itself refer definitely to strangers ; apart 
from these everything was regarded as applying 
to Jews alone. The morality is narrow and 
exclusive. Even in the writings of a man of such 
high culture and breadth of view as Jesus Sirach 
we read, ' Arouse thine anger (O God) and shake 
forth thy wrath, root out the adversary and grind 
the enemy. . . . Break into pieces the heads of 
the princes of thine enemies, that say : there is 
none beside us.' 1 These are words which remind 
us of the worst imprecatory Psalms. There were 
also, of course, milder and more broad-minded 
characters ; we need but think of Hillel and 
Philo. The missionary impulse, the propaganda, 
led to mitigations. But on the whole we find, 
even in the moral dealings of the Jews, that 
exclusion of all but themselves which, on the 
other hand, drew the bitter hatred of all foreigners 
upon their race. The way in which this exclusive 
1 338.12. 



60 DOCTRINE AND PIETY IN THE CHURCH 

feeling had a certain effect even on Jesus is clearly 
seen in the fact that he felt himself sent, in the 
first place, only to his own people, and forbade 
the mission to the Gentiles and Samaritans. 1 In 
post- exilic times this feeling underwent a very 
distressing development ; it was applied in 
practice even to members of the Jewish race. 
When various groups stood sharply contrasted and 
severed from one another, above all the groups 
of the pious and the ungodly, the members of one 
circle thought themselves at liberty to treat those 
of another as Gentiles, or even worse. Here again 
a well-meaning man like Jesus Sirach may serve 
as a typical example. ' Give to the pious and 
take not the part of the sinner, do good to the 
meek and give not to the ungodly ... for even 
the Highest hateth the sinner, and requiteth the 
ungodly with chastisement.' The pious man 
conceived his God in his own image, and he 
hated the ungodly, even among his own com- 
patriots, as he hated a Gentile. Morality bears the 
character of sectarian arrogance. Jesus has raised 
an eternal monument to this type of feeling in the 
well-known parable of the Good Samaritan. 2 In 
* Matt. 1 52* ; 106 sq., if spoken by Jesus. 2 Luke io 30 - 37 . 



DOCTRINE AND PIETY IN THE CHURCH 6l 

the course of the first Christian century the bitter 
antagonism between Pharisees and ' 'Am-ha-ares 
passed all bounds. 

These were the chief ways in which morality 
was prejudiced by its mere connexion with the 
Law ; there were others which resulted from 
the juristic character of the Law. What a judge 
has to enforce is the wording of the statute. In 
the same way all moral demands seemed to be 
fulfilled when the letter of the Law was obeyed.: 
This is what gives Paul occasion to call Judaism 
the covenant of the letter, and to declare that the 
letter killeth. 1 And its influence upon the very 
breath of life of all true morality, such as springs 
forth from a right state of the spirit, is indeed 
mortal. A flaming denunciation of the chaining 
together of the letter and morality is given us in 
the first great section of the Sermon on the Mount, 
in which Jesus brings out again and again just the 
one truth, that an ethical demand is very far 
from being satisfied by observance of its mere 
wording ; rather, as the whole Sermon shows, 
the whole weight must be laid on the spiritual 
state in which the single act takes its rise. Closely 

i II Cor. 36. 



62 DOCTRINE AND PIETY IN THE CHURCH 

connected with the moral literalism of the Jews 
is this further fact, that everything which over- 
steps the letter of the Law — praiseworthy as it 
is from the point of view of ordinary good sense 
and practical wisdom — gains the character of some- 
thing supererogatory, something to be rewarded. 
Another result of the amalgamation of Law and 
righteousness was not less dangerous. Amid the 
mass of particular injunctions the moral com- 
mands lost their unique dignity, lost their place 
of eminence above the ceremonial regulations. 
They were so little, amid so much. And often 
enough, through human indolence and the base 
instincts of our race, that little was allowed to be 
hid behind the big bulk of the rest. The moral 
commands were much more difficult to obey, 
because they required a much higher degree of 
self-conquest. This was what Jesus had in mind 
when he said to the Pharisees, ' Ye tithe all mint, 
dill, and cumin, and leave undone the hard part 
of the law, righteousness, mercy, and faithfulness.' 1 
We know perfectly well that the judgment of these 
words did not fall on all Pharisees. There were 
noble figures among them, who had not lost the 
iMatt. 2323, 



DOCTRINE AND PIETY IN THE CHURCH 63 

consciousness that the fulfilment of the Law is 
something which involves the whole conduct of 
life. But the danger which arose out of the 
juristic character of the Law was always there, 
and very many must have succumbed to it. In 
the closest possible connexion with this stood that 
hypocrisy with which Jesus, in such an extremely 
bitter style, reproaches the scribes and Pharisees. 
In the great discourse against the Pharisees, Matt. 
23, from verse 13 onwards, there are seven Woes, 
which all except one 1 begin with the words, 
' Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! ' 
Assuredly there cannot have been many who were 
consciously hypocritical, even though there were 
some who speculated with their exemplary piety 
on the admiration of the people. 2 What roused 
the indignation of Jesus to such a pitch was, 
fundamentally, the intrinsic untruth of the whole 
system. Behind the fair whitewash on the 
sepulchres he saw dead men's bones. 3 Piety 
which has severed itself from the spring of a 
really good spirit is, consciously or unconsciously, 
hypocrisy. 

If we now turn to those exercises of worship in 
1 Matt. 23I6. 2 Matt. 6*-* ; 23*. 3 Matt. 232?. 



64 DOCTRINE AND PIETY IN THE CHURCH 

which this piety was active, we find the Law pene- 
trating into this field too. The whole Temple 
worship and everything connected with it is 
carried out with such punctilious fidelity because 
the Law commands it. That is the dominating 
point of view. At first sight it is indeed an 
astonishing and remarkable thing that the 
Pharisees, the violent opponents of the priestly 
Sadducaean nobility, fulfil all their ritual duties 
with a fidelity not to be surpassed, and even 
when possible outstrip the commandment of the 
Law — and in all this are only strengthening 
the back and filling the purse of their priestly 
opponents. The solution of this apparent contra- 
diction lies in the fact that these ritual duties 
are enjoined in the Law, and therefore must be 
fulfilled. 

In consequence of this the Temple with its 
priesthood and its worship enjoyed the highest 
respect and authority until its destruction in 
70 a.d. The glory which had surrounded the 
sanctuary of Solomon in ancient days was not 
forgotten, and still had its effect. And the new 
sanctuary of Herod stood there in its splendour. 
* See, what stones, what buildings ! ' exclaimed 



DOCTRINE AND PIETY IN THE CHURCH 65 

the disciples, in astonishment, to Jesus j 1 and 
so may many a pilgrim have cried, with admira- 
tion and awe, when he came with the throng of 
his fellows to Jerusalem for one of the great feasts * 
For those who dwelt in and around Jerusalem the 
Temple had a quite special importance. Every 
day crowds came in to the sacrifices, of which, 
in accordance with the penitential feeling of the 
time, the sin-offerings were valued most highly. 
The great Day of Atonement, with its expiation 
for the whole people and the whole land, was the 
chief festival. The laity were blessed by the 
priests, and delighted in the splendid ceremonial. 
The stay in Jerusalem — as we should now express 
it — was very interesting. There was always some- 
thing to see — teachers with their pupils, disputa- 
tions, private sacrifices, the arrival of strangers. 
And even the Jew who remained far off was filled 
with satisfaction and thankfulness that for him too, 
morning and evening, the burnt-sacrifices ascended 
to heaven. Against this, on the other hand, very 
considerable dues had to be met — the Temple 
tax, the gifts for sacrifices, which fell wholly or 
in part to the priests, the firstlings and first-fruits, 
1 Mark 1 3 1 . 

F 



66 DOCTRINE AND PIETY IN THE CHURCH 

the tithe, payment of which was treated above 
all as a serious duty, personal presents, and so 
forth. And all this for the sake of the Law, as 
Jesus Sirach clearly says, c Appear not before 
the face of the Lord with empty hands, for all 
these [sacrifices] are needful, since he has com- 
manded them.' 1 The violent denunciation of 
sacrifices by the prophets had not indeed been 
forgotten. The same Sirach, who in 32 1 , begins 
with the words, ' He that observes the Law offers 
many sacrifices,' says four verses later, ' The 
good pleasure of the Lord is gained by abstaining 
from sin, and his appeasement by abstaining from 
unrighteousness.' Still, for the letter's sake, the 
Sadducaean priesthood was not merely endured 
but highly honoured. In spite, however, of all 
this outward devotion religion had already severed 
itself, unconsciously, from the Temple cultus. 
Jesus had no occasion to attack it. Among the 
Essenes the separation was open and avowed. 
And thus the disappearance of the Temple was 
endured without any grave crisis ensuing. 

The institution which really corresponded to 
the new individual piety was one which had arisen 

1 32 6 sq. 



DOCTRINE AND PIETY IN THE CHURCH 67 

at the same time, one which was not commanded 
in the Law, the spiritual worship of the synagogue. 
But even in this second and most important out- 
ward manifestation of piety the Law was a de- 
cisive factor. We recognize this as soon as we 
realize what went on in the synagogue service. 

Its external guidance lay in the hands of a 
president, the so-called archisynagogus (' ruler of 
the synagogue,' Luke 13 14 ), who was most prob- 
ably chosen from the elders of the civil com- 
munity. The service began with a confession, 
the so-called Sh e ma ( ('hear!'), a compilation of 
passages from the Law. (There is a high degree 
of certainty that it existed in the time of Jesus.) 
Then followed a prayer, spoken standing, with 
face turned to Jerusalem. One member, called 
on by the president, spoke for all ; the rest 
responded with an occasional Amen. The chief 
element, which came next, consisted in two 
lessons from the Hebrew text, accompanied by a 
Syrian translation. First a passage from the Law 
was read, the Paraska, ' section.' In this way 
the whole Law was gradually read aloud. Then 
came a passage from the prophets, the Haphtara, 
■ conclusion ' (i.e., of the reading of scripture). 



68 DOCTRINE AND PIETY IN THE CHURCH 

The lessons could be read, and the sermon which 
followed could be preached, by any of the mem- 
bers who were capable and willing. The service 
closed with a blessing, which was spoken if possible 
by a priest or Levite. Alms, too, in money or 
kind, were collected in the synagogue by special 
officials. 

In this kind of public worship three points are 
especially prominent. We notice first its singu- 
larly democratic character. The powers of the 
officials, the president, the two or three alms- 
collectors, and the servant of the synagogue, were 
concerned only with external matters ; the 
conduct of the service lay intrinsically in the 
hands of the congregation. Anyone might speak, 
avow his faith, pray, read, preach. Jesus himself, 
for instance, spoke in the synagogue. It was of 
course only natural that the high repute and 
technical knowledge of the scribes should gradually 
win for them, here as elsewhere, a predominant 
influence. In the second place, then, we remark 
the didactic character of the whole institution. In 
the centre of its procedure stands the scripture 
lesson, more especially the reading of the Law. 
Even the sermon was as a rule a practical com- 



DOCTRINE AND PIETY IN THE CHURCH 69 

ment on the law. The members of the congrega- 
tion assemble to be instructed in the Law. Our 
Gospels speak of ' the teaching in the synagogue.' 
On the other hand the ceremonial elements are 
by no means prominent. What calls, however, for 
the highest praise is the entire absence of magical 
or sacramental features; the whole service lives 
and moves in a purely spiritual sphere. Its great 
resemblance to our Christian services, for which 
it has served as a direct model, is obvious to all. 
Among the people the synagogue services were 
highly esteemed ; they were really popular. The 
sentence of exclusion from the synagogue, which 
was probably spoken by the elders of the congrega- 
tion, was regarded as the severest of punishments. 1 
In connexion with the synagogue worship cer- 
tain pious exercises were especially cultivated in 
everyday life — the study of the Law, prayer, 
almsgiving. It was the sign of a pious Israelite 
to be busied with the Law as much as possible, 
even outside the synagogue. As Hillel says, ' an 
ignorant man cannot be truly pious,' and ' the 
more knowledge of the Law, the more life.' 2 It 

1 Cf. Luke 622 ; John 922, 12*2, i&. 
2 Recorded in the Pirke Aboth. 



JO DOCTRINE AND PIETY IN THE CHURCH 

was an ideal of life to repeat and ponder the Law 
in time of work and of recreation. This conception 
finds its classical expression in the late introduc- 
tion to our collection of Psalms in the Old Testa- 
ment : ' Well for the man who wanders not in 
the counsel of the wicked, nor walks the way of 
sinners, nor sits in the seat of those that mock, 
but delights in the Law of Yahweh, and meditates 
upon his Law day and night.' 1 Closely associated 
with the study of the Law was the practice of 
prayer, for which precise directions existed in 
the time of Jesus. The Sh e ma\ which we have 
already referred to, was uttered morning and 
evening. Another prayer which certainly existed, 
at least in the main, was the Sh e moneh-esreh, 
' the prayer of eighteen supplications,' a really 
beautiful and pregnant petition — only somewhat 
too long — which was to be repeated, according to 
a later rule, morning, noon, and evening. Let 
us cite some of its loftiest thoughts as examples. 
e Praised be thou, Lord our God, and God of 
our fathers . . . Thou art almighty for ever, O 
Lord, that makest the dead to live . . . Thou 
art holy, and thy name is holy 2 . . . Praised be 
1 Psalm i 1 sq. 2 A reminiscence of this in our Paternoster. 



DOCTRINE AND PIETY IN THE CHURCH 71 

thou, O Lord, the giver of knowledge . . . Praised 
be thou, O Lord, that hast pleasure in a contrite 
heart. Forgive us, our father, for we have sinned. 1 
. . . Praised be thou, Lord, the redeemer of 
Israel. Hallow us, O Lord, and we shall be holy j 
help us, and we shall be holpen ; for thou art our 
praise.' Prayers at table, thanksgivings before 
and after meat, were also in general use ; Jesus 
himself used them. Then came private prayers. 
Beyond all doubt this tenderest blossom of the 
religious life was much injured by the coercion of 
rules, especially if we should suppose the much 
more detailed prescriptions of the Mishna to have 
been in force in Jesus' lifetime. But the necessity 
of repeating one and the same lengthy prayer 
several times a day, and the same prayer every 
day, must of itself lead in the end to a mere 
mechanical gabble. This fate has befallen the 
Paternoster, down to our own time, and no 
formulated church prayers can escape it. The 
prayerful ostentation of the Pharisees, who spoke 
prayers aloud as they walked the streets — their 
long petitions, with no heart in them — are known 
to us through the Gospels. 2 

1 Reference to previous foot-note. 
« Matt. 66, 158; Mark 12*0. 



72 DOCTRINE AND PIETY IN THE CHURCH 

And just as the alms were collected in the 
synagogue, in order to be distributed afterwards, 
so also the pious Jew used to give freely in 
other ways to the poor. Compassion and alms- 
giving were interchangeable terms. The litera- 
ture is full of exhortations to beneficence, in 
which we can clearly see the special connexion 
between pious works and membership of the 
church. The best known passage comes from 
the Book of Tobit : ' Laudable is prayer with 
fasting and mercy and righteousness . . . For 
beneficence saves from death and cleanses from 
every sin.' 1 The value of alms can hardly be 
rated higher. It belongs to the range of things 
in which merit, and thereby propitiation, can be 
soonest attained. In the passage just quoted 
fasting is named in the closest connexion with 
prayer and alms. Although not commanded in 
the Law, except on the great Day of Atonement, 
yet as a consequence of the post-exilic penitential 
feeling the practice of fasting had become extra- 
ordinarily popular as a token of great piety. 
General fasts were held especially in times of 
severe need, for instance in times of drought, and 

1 12 8 sq. 



DOCTRINE AND PIETY IN THE CHURCH 73 

always on Monday and Thursday. Of course no 
limit was set to private fasting. Among the 
Pharisees there were exemplary saints to be found 
who fasted every week on those two days, and were 
it is true, extremely conscious of the fact. 1 He 
who would be pious must fast, and was very 
willing that his fasting should not be concealed. 2 
The disciples of John the Baptist used to fast, 
and Jesus and his disciples fell sadly under sus- 
picion, because they did not fast. 3 This practice 
has simply been taken over by the Christian 
Church from the Jewish. Apart from ceremony 
and public worship the most notable manifesta- 
tions of Church piety were almsgiving, prayer, 
and fasting. It is no accident that these three 
points form the subject of the second section of 
the Sermon on the Mount. 4 

1 Luke 1 812. 2 Matt. 6". 3Mark2is. *Matt. 6i-i*. 



Chapter III 

POPULAR PIETY 

It must be emphasized at the outset that no 
contrast is intended between the piety of the 
church and that of the people. What we have 
been reviewing was certainly, in the first place, 
the doctrine and piety of those circles which 
regarded themselves as especially pious, and 
exercised a determining influence in the Jewish 
Church, the circles of the Scribes and Pharisees. 
But the masses stood under that influence, and 
were attached to the church. They accepted as 
truth, which ought to be believed, that which was 
expounded to them in school and synagogue, and 
they conformed to the piety of the Pharisees. 
Still it was inevitable, then as now, that in the 
faith of the people there was much which bore a 
very different aspect from that of its original 
meaning. In the first place, it is important 



POPULAR PIETY 75 

to note that the belief which the people held was 
only a fraction of that of the church. Much of 
what the leading church circles believe is unknown 
and unintelligible to the people ; much lies outside 
the possible range of popular belief or conception. 
For instance, the doctrine of those strange hybrids 
such as Wisdom, the Word, the Shechina, which 
we have examined, can hardly have been known 
among the people, and so far as it was known 
it can scarcely have been understood. On the 
other hand it was impossible for the people to 
observe the multitude of particular commands 
and traditions which the scribes put forward. 
They had neither time nor money enough for that. 
In fact, exemplary piety was only possible for 
those who were in tolerably good circumstances. 
There was always going on, therefore, in the 
popular religion a process of selection ; and, 
alongside that, a coarsening process, which is 
difficult to lay hold of in detail, but was un- 
doubtedly at work. We may be sure, for instance, 
that the ideas concerning angels took, in the minds 
of the people, a much more realistic and concrete 
form — that downright belief in demons and devils 
about which we shall speak later. Such a 



y6 POPULAR PIETY 

coarsening process may easily result in an actual 
transformation of belief. It is exceedingly likely 
that in the popular faith the angels received a 
prominence which endangered monotheism itself. 
This affords the best explanation of that angel- 
worship which is assailed in the New Testament, 
for instance in the Epistle to the Colossians, the 
Epistle to the Hebrews, and the Revelation of John. 
Then again, popular piety always contains residu- 
ary, belated elements, which the more instructed 
have already surmounted. Views which were once 
general are held to with remarkable tenacity 
by the people. In the religion of the church a 
belief prevails in retribution in a world to come ; 
but among the people the ancient belief in a 
retribution in this world is ineradicable — the belief 
which meets us in the Old Testament Psalms, the 
Psalms of Solomon, and in the New Testament, 
that the pious are prosperous on the earth, and 
that suffering is punishment. 1 The religious 
development had left that belief far behind. In 
the new church piety individualism, the decisive 
importance of the single personality, had asserted 
itself with power ; but among the people the 
i Cf. e.g., in the New Testament : Luke 13 1 - 6 ; John 9 1 - 3 . 



POPULAR PIETY 77 

national idea was inveterately rooted, the feeling 
that the Jewish people, as such, was favoured by 
God. Among the masses it was still a distinctive 
and glorious title that they were * the Israelites, 
to whom belong the sonship and the glory and the 
covenants and the giving of the Law and the 
service and the promises, to whom the fathers 
belong.' 1 God belongs to his own people, and 
that people to God. He cannot abandon it ; he 
must needs save it. Nothing illustrates this 
national feeling more strikingly than the fact 
that in 70 a.d., just before the end, many of the 
Jews who were pent up in the besieged city 
believed firmly and fixedly, up to their last breath, 
that God would intervene, in view of the final 
catastrophe, and miraculously rescue them. This 
national element is the decisive trait in the piety 
of the people. At this point we must expressly 
point out that it offers no contrast to the feeling 
of the leading church circles. The Pharisees 
cherished the national hopes of Israel. They too 
believed in the Messiah. Every day, in the 
Sh e moneh-esreh, the prayer was offered, ' May the 
scion of David thy servant soon spring forth, and 
1 Rom. 9* sq. 



78 POPULAR PIETY 

lift up his horn through thy help ; for we wait 
upon thy help every day. Praised be thou, O 
Lord, that makest to spring forth a horn of 
salvation.' The Psalms of Solomon themselves, 
which most strongly reflect the popular expecta- 
tion of a Messiah, are conceived from the stand- 
point of Pharisaic piety. But the difference of 
shade was, in this case, very significant. Among 
the church circles, among the Pharisees, the 
national expectancy was less prominent. What 
filled, for them, the whole range of present thought 
and action was the Law, and it afforded them a 
satisfaction which prevailed even under circum- 
stances of great depression. But among the 
people all this was reversed. Even if we leave 
the Zealots, the national fanatics, quite on one 
side, the ordinary people, who felt the oppression 
of the political situation and the evil times most 
severely, lived in the national thought, and clung 
to it with all the warmth of their feeling, with all 
the force of their imagination, with all the wist- 
fulness of hope. At the time when Jesus ap- 
peared the popular piety of the Jews was entirely 
concerned with the future. Out of the miserable 
present, in which the people dragged on a dreary 



POPULAR PIETY 79 

existence under the iron rule of Rome, the most 
glowing hopes went forth towards what was soon 
to come. The great mass of the people lived 
outside the present, in a future which was awaited 
with feverish suspense. ' The kingdom of God 
and Messiah ' was the watch- word of their religion. 
When Jesus appeared John the Baptist stood on 
the bank of Jordan and preached to great throngs 
that the kingdom of God and the Messiah were at 
hand. 1 It was a message to the people. 2 There 
are three points in which the national elements 
in this popular feeling can be discerned — in the 
way in which the kingdom of God and the 
kingdom of the Jews merge into one another, in 
their conception of the Messiah, in the fate of 
other nations. 

It had long been an established idea among the 
Jews that Israel had but one king, Yahweh, 
beside whom no other had place. The Maccabean 
rising formed an exception, which, after the fall 
of the Hasmonean family, was quickly corrected. 
The Idumean dynasty of the Herods had always 
been hateful to the Jews, as a sacrilegious presump- 
tion. The kingship or the kingdom of Yahweh 
i Matt. 32 and " sq. 2 Matt. 35.7. 



80 POPULAR PIETY 

had been spoken of in the Old Testament in 
numerous places, in the Prophets, the Psalms 
and elsewhere, either in the sense that it was 
present and always existed, 1 or in the other sense 
that it was to come in the future. 2 Both ideas 
continued to appear in the later Jewish literature ; 
but in the time of Jesus, and indeed much earlier, 
perhaps ever since Daniel, the coming of the 
kingdom had gained preponderance, and swayed 
the souls of the people in one direction. When 
John the Baptist and Jesus proclaimed the 
message, ' The kingdom of God is at hand,' when 
Jesus taught his disciples to pray, ' Thy kingdom 
come,' the deepest yearning of the people found 
expression. Every Jew understood thereby that 
the hidden rule of God should be plainly mani- 
fested, that his kingdom should appear visibly 
upon the earth : but their faith had a reverse 
side — in the minds of the Jews this kingdom was 
their kingdom. This fact nowhere appears more 
luminously than in Daniel 7 27 , where the last time, 
after the judgment, is spoken of : ' Then shall the 
kingdom and the dominion and the greatness of 
the kingdoms under the whole heaven be given to 
lEx. is 18 ; Ps. 145 13 . 2 i s# 242 s ; Micah 4 7 . 



POPULAR PIETY 8l 

the people of the saints of the Most High ; his 
kingdom shall be an everlasting kingdom, and all 
dominions shall serve and be subject to him/ 
Here the place of the eternal kingdom of God is 
taken by the eternal kingdom of the people of 
the saints, that is to say, of the Jews. True, it 
is God who brings the coming kingdom, but it 
is in fact the Jewish kingdom. The national 
definiteness of Jewish expectation appears here 
very clearly. Accordingly the kingdom of the 
last time will be situated in Palestine ; its centre 
will be Jerusalem and the Temple, both splendidly 
glorified. From all the ends of the earth the 
scattered Jews shall be summoned home by the 
great trumpets of God 1 (thus Jesus Sirach, Tobit, 
the Psalms of Solomon, etc.) and then a golden 
age shall begin in the new kingdom ; fertility 
like that of Paradise, abundant progeny, child- 
birth without throes, no sorrow or sighing, but 
rest and peace. The deeper religious and moral 
conceptions of the vision of God, the consum- 
mation of sonship, purity and holiness are not 
absent, but are decidedly less prominent than these 
nationalist ideas. There are not many descrip- 
1 With a reminiscence of Is. 27 13 . 



82 POPULAR PIETY 

tions of the future age which stand upon such a 
height as the concluding words of the Psalms of 
Solomon, 18 6 - 9 : ' Blessed is he that shall live in 
these days and may behold the salvation of the 
Lord, which he is preparing for the generation to 
come under the rod of chastisement of the anointed 
of the Lord in the fear of his God, in spiritual 
wisdom, righteousness and strength, that he may 
lead everyone in works of righteousness through 
the fear of God, and present them all together before 
the face of the Lord, a good generation full of the 
fear of God in the days of grace.' These beautiful 
words bring us to the consideration of him that 
was to play a special part in the coming kingdom 
of God — the Messiah. 

Ever since the time of the prophet Isaiah the 
Jewish people had been hoping for the Messiah, 
that is ' the anointed ' of God, in a special sense 
of the word — the king of the future. Isaiah 9 1 - 6 
and 11 1 - 9 , passages of the greatest significance for 
all succeeding time, are the brilliant stars whose 
gleam prefigures that expectation. There are 
some investigators by whom these passages are 
not assigned to Isaiah. In any case we must go 
back as far as the later exilic time ; but hitherto 



POPULAR PIETY 83 

no really decisive proof has been brought forward. 
The birth of such a hope in the time of Isaiah is 
quite intelligible. During the decline and sub- 
sequent fall of the dynasty of David the Jewish 
people could not forget the pristine glory of that 
house. They clung to the promise which had 
been given to David, ' Thine house and thy 
kingdom shall be made sure for ever before thee ; 
thy throne shall be established for ever.' 1 And 
so, about the ruins of the fallen tabernacle of 
David, the hope crept and climbed that once 
again a king of David's house should come, 
victorious, mighty, as in the old time, but also a 
ruler after God's heart, under whom peace reigns in 
the land and righteousness prevails. The figure 
of the Messiah is therefore connected in the closest 
way with the national expectation of the people, 
with the overthrow of their enemies, with his own 
powerful lordship. The dominant influence of 
these conceptions continued to operate in the piety 
of the people. 

Still, the idea of the Messiah was not without 
its history. Just in the last centuries before Jesus 
it fell much into the background, as the conviction 
VII Sam. 7I6. 



84 POPULAR PIETY 

gained sway that God himself, by a miraculous 
interposition from heaven, would effect a radical 
revolution in all the relations of the world ; in 
one department of Jewish literature indeed — as 
we shall see in the next chapter — the Messianic 
idea itself underwent a fundamental transforma- 
tion. There were times, such as the glorious 
period of the Maccabean dynasty, when people 
believed they were already living in the Messianic 
era, that the Messiah was already before them 
in the person of the reigning prince ; times in 
which king and priest were one. The best known 
witness of this is Psalm no. 1 But when the 
Maccabees fell a quick revulsion came to pass in 
the popular feeling. The Maccabees were now 
the blasphemers, who had arrogantly usurped the 
kingly dignity ; the hope for a coming Messianic 
king, which had never been extinguished, even in 
times for which we have no testimony, was now 
again fanned to a bright glow. This is nowhere 
so clearly to be seen as in the Psalms of Solomon, 
already often mentioned ; their high-strung ex- 
pectation gives us our most important witness 
concerning the popular Messianic conceptions in 
i Cf. also the Testament of Levi, 18. 



POPULAR PIETY 85 

the last decade before Jesus. That a strong 
Messianic excitement was stirring among the 
people at the time of Jesus' appearance is certain. 
This is proved by such a figure as that of John 
the Baptist, the state of mind of Jesus' disciples, 
the expectancy of the crowds, and the pretenders 
to the office of Messiah from among the Zealots, 
who continued to appear, down to Barkochba 
in Trajan's time. 

If we now ask, more in detail, what the nature 
of the Messianic conceptions were when Jesus 
appeared, we must emphasize strongly at the out- 
set that in the whole of Judaism, down to Jesus' 
time, no trace of a suffering Messiah is to be found. 
If Jesus held that in spite of his sufferings, in spite 
even of his shameful end, he himself it was whom 
God should send as Messiah, that was an act of 
his own, personal, valiant faith. It was not until 
much later that Judaism began to speak of a 
suffering Messiah, and it then contrived to remain 
faithful to its original view by distinguishing 
between two Messiahs — a dying Messiah, the son 
of Joseph, and a victorious lord, the son of David. 
In Jesus' time the expected Messiah was to be a 
triumphant ruler over Palestine and the Jewish 



00 POPULAR PIETY 

people, whose sway should inaugurate the new age. 
In accordance with Malachi 3 1 Elijah was looked 
for as his forerunner. 1 Moses and Enoch had 
also been regarded as precursors. Since Isaiah n 1 
it had been held as an unshakable certainty that 
the Messiah must be a descendant of David. 2 
As regards his relation to God it was by no means 
the case that God was in any way eclipsed by the 
Messiah. On the contrary he is the gift of God's 
grace, he .' whom God has chosen,' he appears at 
the time ' which thou hast chosen, O God, that he 
may rule over thy servant Israel.' 3 It is God's 
faithfulness, compassion, grace that permits the 
son of David to arise ; God's glory is reflected in 
him. 4 The seventeenth of the Psalms of Solomon 
begins and closes with the words, ' The Lord (God) 
is our King for ever and ever.' But in truth there 
does exist a close, personal relation between God 
and Messiah, though always a relation in which 
the Messiah is subordinate. He is directed by 
God ; he lives in the fear of God ; God is his king, 
his hope ; God gives him his spirit, his wisdom, 

1 Jesus Sirach 48* and 10 ; Mark 6I 5 , 828, 9 n S q., is 3 * S q. 

2 E.g. Ps. of Solomon 17 21 ; Mark 12 35 , io* 7 ; Rom. i 3 ; 
II Tim. 28, and many other passages. 

3 Ps. of Solomon 1 721, &. ± Ps. of Solomon 1 7 3 sq. 21 , 31 



POPULAR PIETY 8? 

his strength. 1 All this is expressed compactly 
in the phrase — not, however, a very frequent 
phrase — ' Son of God,' which refers to Psalm 2 7 , 
understood in a Messianic sense. 2 But what is 
intended by this title is certainly only an inner, 
personal, spiritual relation between God and 
Messiah, not a physical relation, transcending the 
spiritual. His nearness to God comes out in the 
character of the Messiah. He is energetic, up- 
right, wise, filled with the spirit ; he will not 
stumble, he is even sinless. 3 Whenever the moral 
qualities of the Messiah are depicted the influence 
of Isaiah n 1 - 9 is quite especially prominent. Yet 
again, it is his abundant endowment with the 
spirit which explains that expectation, revealed 
in the New Testament, of special miracles to be 
wrought by the Messiah. 4 But however clearly 
we must recognize that Jewish piety ascribes to 
the Messiah a high level, indeed a unique level 
of religious and moral worth, which is described 
sometimes in glorious words, yet in the mind of 

1 Ps. of Solomon 17 32 , 34 , 37 -±°. 

2 In the New Testament, e.g., Mark 3 11 , s 7 . 

3 Ps. of Solomon 17 36 ; Testament of Levi 18. For the 
application of this Messianic dogma to Jesus in the New 
Testament, cf. II Cor. 521 ; Heb. 415, 726 ; 1 p e t. 222 ; I 
John 35. *Matt. 112-6, 12 3 *. 



88 POPULAR PIETY 

the Jew, when he thinks of the future son of 
David, what stands first is something else — the 
overthrow of enemies, the glorious kingly rule 
in Palestine. This brings us to the last point, 
the fate of other nations in the Messianic age. 

That same seventeenth Psalm of Solomon, upon 
which I have already drawn considerably for 
illustration, begins its picture of the glorious 
future (cf. 21 - 2 &) in quite different tones. How 
characteristic these verses are ! Yes, it was of 
this that every pious Jew of that time thought 
first, when he spoke of the Messiah — the shattering 
of enemies with a staff of iron, destruction of the 
Roman empire, which had now laid its heavy hand 
on the Holy Land as once, in Daniel's time, the 
Grecian empire had done. Jewish piety is filled 
with that thirst for revenge to which this is 
a religious desire — c In thy lovingkindness cut off 
mine enemies, and destroy all that oppress me, for 
I am thy servant,' 1 which could apostrophise 
Babylon, ' Happy shall he be that seizes and 
dashes thy little ones against the rock.' 2 Psalm 
2 9 and Isaiah n 4 were especially favourite pass- 
ages. The Messiah, Yahweh, and his angel play 
IPs. 143 12 . 2p s . I37 9. 



POPULAR PIETY 89 

here the same part. The Jews themselves too are 
sometimes thought of as sharing in the work of 
retribution. 1 It is in the valley of Jehoshaphat 
by Jerusalem that the great judgment of destruc- 
tion shall go on. 2 The frightful description in 
Joel 3 16 , ' Yahweh roars from Zion, and utters his 
voice from Jerusalem, that the heavens and the 
earth shake,' had given wide scope to passionate 
dreams of revenge. This can be clearly traced in 
Revelation 14 20 , where, in a passage originally 
Jewish, a slaughter so hideous is looked for that 
the blood reaches to the bridles of the horses, a 
thousand six hundred furlongs wide. 3 Those 
Gentiles who do not fall victims to destruction — 
for here the representations vary : sometimes all 
perish, sometimes only the oppressors — serve only 
as vassals to exhibit the triumph of the Jewish 
people in its full glory. They do not form an 
object of independent interest ; they are not to be 
won by teaching and conversion ; but they may 
bring their treasures, and foreign kings may count 
it an honour to serve Jerusalem, as Isaiah 60 1 - 17 
had described so clearly and decisively for all 

1 Thus Enoch 90 19 . 3 Cf. Enoch ioo 1 - 3 . 

2 Sometimes an actual conflict is thought of ; more often a 
divine judgment, carried out, perhaps, by fire. 



90 POPULAR PIETY 

the time to come. 1 At most the Gentile nations 
shall receive the leaves of the tree of life, while 
its fruits are reserved for Israel. 2 But Palestine 
and Jerusalem will then be ' pure,' free from 
all gentile defilement. Thus Joel had already 
prophesied, ' Jerusalem shall be holy, and strangers 
shall no more pass through it.' 3 And it resounds 
again in the Psalms of Solomon that the Messiah 
shall distribute the holy people over the land 
according to their tribes, ' and neither aliens nor 
strangers shall dwell among them any more.' 4 
That is the ideal. In this point the exclusive, 
strictly national character of this piety is especially 
palpable. And yet there were, connected with 
these national hopes, feelings of another kind, 
strongly individualistic, such as appear in the 
expectation of the resurrection and retribution 
in a future world. But they can better be dealt 
with in the next chapter, in connexion with that 
peculiar manifestation which we are accustomed 
to call the Jewish Apocalyptic. For we then 
learn to conceive resurrection and future retribu- 
tion not as isolated, extraordinary forms of belief, 
but as necessary constituents of a new and com- 
plete theory of the world. 

i Rev. 2 1 2 *. 2 Rev. 222. 3 j oe l 31?. * i;28. 



Chapter IV 

THE JEWISH APOCALYPTIC 

The phenomena which we have now to discuss 
cannot well be brought under the head of popular 
piety, for we are here dealing only in part with a 
common possession of the great masses. Those 
national aspirations which we have just considered 
were really a common possession. We learn from 
the New Testament that even the disciples of Jesus 
clung to them to the last. This is shown by the 
petitions of the sons of Zebedee, 1 and by the utter 
lack of understanding which the disciples showed 
in view of Jesus' path of suffering. It speaks in 
Luke 24 21 and Acts i 6 . But this new range of 
thought does not stand in any opposition either to 
the popular or the Pharisaic religion. There were 
apocalypses which clearly betray the Pharisaic 
standpoint, even though most of them did not 
iMark io 3 ?. 



92 THE JEWISH APOCALYPTIC 

originate in the circles of the scribes, but in those 
of the laity ; and on the other hand the views of 
these remarkable writings were represented far 
and wide among the people, to some extent indeed 
had reached the stage of general conviction, as in 
the case of the doctrines of resurrection and 
retribution. The newer, individualistic piety of 
the Church stamped itself strongly upon these 
works, while nationalistic traits are not lacking. 
It is also incorrect to regard the apocalyptic 
literature as a sort of heretical backwater of the 
legal Judaism, though Jewish scholars are apt to 
take this view. In the writings themselves there 
is no trace of anything of the kind. The volume 
of this literature, and the fact that the Christians 
simply took over the Jewish apocalypses, and 
wrote similar works themselves, tells strongly 
against such a notion. It was not until after 
70 a.d., when the school of the Talmud, the 
strictly legal, rabbinical school had gained the 
day, that the apocalyptic literature was rejected. 
But at this point it is necessary to go farther back, 
and make clear the real nature of this phenomenon. 
We are not dealing with a few isolated writings, 
but with a widely ramified literature, which, as 



THE JEWISH APOCALYPTIC 93 

the name Apocalypse, ' Revelation,' implies, pro- 
fesses to reveal something. This something was 
nothing less than the divine secrets, which would 
otherwise have been hidden from mankind. The 
first apocalyptic book which we know is actually 
in the Old Testament canon ; this is the book of 
Daniel, written in the year 165 B.C. Its most 
important successors down to the time of Jesus' 
ministry are the book of Enoch, preserved in the 
Ethiopic language ; the Jewish writing which is 
the basis of the Testament of the Twelve Patri- 
archs ; the third book of the Sibylline Oracles ; 
the Ascension of Moses ; perhaps too the ' Slavonic' 
Enoch. But the fourth book of Ezra and the 
Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch, which belong to 
the end of the first century and are among the 
most remarkable of the Jewish apocalypses, must 
also be considered. 1 Among the Christian Apoca- 
lypses, which made great use of Jewish material, 
and are written in just the same style and tone, 
we must mention, besides the Revelation of John 

1 See Appendix. All the works mentioned except the 
Slavonic Enoch are to be found in a German translation in 
Kantsch, ' die Pseudepigraphen des Alten Testaments,' 1900. 
[The greatest authority on this subject in English is Dr. R. H. 
Charles, whose article in the Encyclopaedia Biblica is an 
admirable introduction to the Apocalyptic Literature.] 



94 THE JEWISH APOCALYPTIC 

which stands in the New Testament, the Revelation 
of Peter, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Ascension 
of Isaiah, the fifth and sixth books of Ezra, and 
the Christian Sibyllines. 1 

If we ask, first of all, what are the marks of this 
literature in respect of form, we at once encounter 
a remarkable interweaving of revelation and 
concealment. The secret of God, which has been 
hidden from eternity, is indeed to be revealed, 
but not for every one ; it is again concealed, 
though not so utterly as to make a revelation 
impossible. A light, transparent veil is thrown 
over the matter, to screen it from rude, intrusive 
eyes, while the understanding soul, guided by the 
spirit, is able to see through. Thus in Daniel the 
name of Antiochus Epiphanes, in the Revelation 
of John the name of Nero, is never uttered ; the 
one speaks of the ' little horn,' the other of the 
* beast,' but the reader of that age with any 
insight knew quite well what was meant. The 
word, ' He that hath ears, let him hear,' 2 is here 
especially applicable. ' Teach it to the wise among 

1 All published in German in Hennecke's ' Neutestamentliche 
Apokryphen/ 1904. [For the English literature in this field 
see Dr. Charles's article in the Encyclopaedia Biblica.] 

2 Revelation of John 13 9 . 



THE JEWISH APOCALYPTIC 95 

thy people, of whom thou art assured that their 
hearts can grasp and hold thy secrets ' ; so we 
read in IV Ezra I2 38 . 1 ' Thou revealest not thy 
secrets to the great crowd,' writes the Syriac 
Baruch 48 s . In these passages the consciousness 
of the apocalyptic writers speaks very plainly, and 
we clearly recognize that their piety cannot simply 
be equated, without further ado, with that of the 
great multitude. In order to understand this 
peculiar combination of revelation and conceal- 
ment we must keep in mind that the Apocalypses 
were produced in times of bitter strife. Plain 
speaking, at such times, means setting life at 
stake. Daniel predicts, as a seer, the downfall of 
the hated reign of the Seleucidae, while Antiochus 
IV (Epiphanes) holds Palestine in his power. The 
authors of IV Ezra, the Syriac Baruch, and the 
Revelation of John beheld their deadly foe in the 
Roman Empire, but were nevertheless its subjects. 
But besides this political motive there was a 
religious motive — the feeling that the divine 
secrets can never be made perfectly intelligible 
to terrestrial man. ' For as the land is given 
over to the forest and the sea to its waves, even 
iCf. Eph. ii* 



96 THE JEWISH APOCALYPTIC 

so can the dwellers upon earth know nothing but 
the earthly, and only the celestials can know 
what is in the heights of heaven.' 1 Man cannot 
fully understand the ways of the Highest : ' But 
thou, a mortal man, that livest in the transitory 
aeon, 2 how canst thou conceive the eternal ? ' 8 
This religious thought colours the presentation of 
the whole revelation, which, in its very secretive- 
ness, evinces its supernatural character, its 
celestial origin. Often, of course, half the mystifi- 
cation is mere literary mannerism. 

Another formal mark of this literature is closely 
connected with the preceding : the whole of it is 
pseudonymous. The concealment of the writer 
is quite in keeping with that of the revelation. 
Here too, however, the veil is generally thin 
enough. Every reader with any skill in history 
can easily see that the writers do not belong to 
the age to which they profess to belong. This 
again was due to the stress of the times. On the 
other hand it beseemed the divine revelation to 
choose the noblest organs for its utterance. The 
authors do not venture to come forward in their 

1 IV Ezra 4 21 . 2 Aeon, — age in the world's destiny. 

3 IV Ezra 4". 



THE JEWISH APOCALYPTIC 97 

own insignificant person ; they call up the grand 
forms of a hoary antiquity, such as Enoch and 
Moses, or of epoch-making periods, such as Ezra 
and Baruch, men of whom we may read in the 
Old Testament, as we do of Moses, that God 
spake with them face to face, or, as of Enoch and 
Elijah, that God withdrew them to himself. It 
seemed natural and credible enough that such 
men as these should receive a mysterious, divine 
revelation. This is another case in which it would 
be quite out of place and unhistorical to regard 
pseudonymity simply as a literary fraud. The 
authors were certainly convinced that the great 
beings under whose names they put forward their 
writings had long been in possession of all these 
revelations. At the same time it cannot be denied 
that the mere instinct of literary imitation also 
played a part, especially in later times. 

Finally we must take note that the whole 
apocalyptic is, as regards its form, soothsaying, 
chiefly in the way of visions. We certainly do find, 
side by side with this, certain speculations, which 
strike us to-day as highly bizarre, concerning the 
secrets of the universe — speculations chiefly of 
an astronomical kind — but beyond question the 

H 



98 THE JEWISH APOCALYPTIC 

chief interest of the writers lies in the future. 
The divine mysteries have yet to be revealed. 
All those frequent retrospects over the historical 
past, which begin if possible with the beginning 
of the world, are never the result of a mere his- 
torian's interest in anything which used to exist ; 
they serve only as pointers into the still unknown 
future, which shall lead to the unveiling of the 
mysteries of God. And since celestial things can 
never be quite adequately represented, it is 
necessary to employ as illustration figures which, 
nevertheless, have always the effect of partly 
concealing what they would exhibit. 

If we turn from form to matter, the first im- 
pression we gain from the whole apocalyptic is 
that of the strange, grotesque, fantastic. The 
reader, for instance, who comes in the Revelation 
of John upon the woman arrayed with the sun, 
and the moon under her feet, and upon her head 
a crown of twelve stars, or the great red dragon, 
that cast the third part of the stars to earth with 
his tail, or the beast with ten horns and seven 
heads, or finds in the Slavonic and the Ethiopic 
Enoch the most extraordinary descriptions of a 
series of heavens and their contents, stands in 



THE JEWISH APOCALYPTIC 99 

face of something utterly unintelligible, a book 
with seven seals. It is only when we pay heed 
to the numerous allusions to contemporary his- 
tory, and especially when we consider this whole 
material in its relation to the wider history of 
religion, that light breaks on our darkness. The 
apocalyptic consists partly of very ancient, sacred, 
mythological elements from foreign religions, 
which have migrated from people to people, and 
are often misunderstood or reinterpreted by the 
author himself, but, in our eyes, only really begin 
to live when they have been brought back into 
their original setting — so to say, brought home 
again. This is the starting-point, and a very 
important field of labour, in the modern re- 
searches of Protestant theologians in the history 
of religion. 

If we regard the piety of the apocalyptists, we 
easily perceive an intense, but at the same time 
overstrained and therefore morbid religiosity. 
The source from which the apocalyptic draws its 
religious power is an unconquerable conviction 
that it stands at the end of this world. It flows 
through these works like a broad river ; the end 
is near, very near. ' The aeon hastens mightily 



100 THE JEWISH APOCALYPTIC 

towards its end.' 1 The past stands to the short 
remaining time as a rain-storm to a single drop, 
as a huge fire to a last wisp of smoke. ' The 
youth of the world is past, and the vigour of 
creation has long come to an end, and the coming 
of the time is all but here, and nearly overpast.' 2 
It is these apocalypses, indeed, which most 
eminently represent the new belief of the church, 
that God will reveal himself in the future. In the 
numerous passages which might here be cited 
religious power is really found. Face to face with 
evil, man clings to God and his heaven, and 
yearns ardently for his coming. What a deep 
influence such a feeling could have is shown 
especially by IV Ezra and the Syriac Baruch, 
where the terrors of the divine judgment rise up 
before even the pious man, and the penetrating 
sense of his own sin grows up beside that of the 
general sinfulness of his race. The conviction 
that the end of the world is imminent fans religious 
fervour into flame ; the soul alienates itself from 
the world and turns with all its energy to God. 
This is, then, beyond question, a mighty religious 
power, which reveals its force most strongly in 

1 IV Ezra 42s. 2 Syr. Baruch S$ 10 . 



THE JEWISH APOCALYPTIC IOI 

Jesus and in primitive Christianity. If Jesus was 
saturated with the sense that he had come in the 
last hour before the shutting of the door, if he 
was convinced that there were people belonging 
to his own generation who would not die, but 
would see the end of the world, 1 if as a result all 
else sank to nothing in his eyes compared with 
the saving of the soul out of the firebrand of this 
world, in all this he was, beyond doubt, under the 
influence of the apocalyptic. And yet, in the 
apocalyptists, this religious tension overstrains 
itself, and becomes irreligious. Man is able to 
calculate the end of the world. This point is of 
supreme importance to our understanding of the 
apocalyptic. The conviction that the end is near 
leads to the question, how long will it be till 
then ? The underlying thought is this : ' God 
has weighed the aeon in the balance, he has 
measured the hours with a measure and counted 
the times by number. He disturbs them not and 
wakes them not until the measure ordained be 
fulfilled.' 2 But then comes the inevitable moment. 
* The Highest looked upon his times, z.nd lo, they 
were at an end, and his aeons, lo, they were full.' 3 
» Mark 91. 2 iv Ezra 4 86 sq. * IV Ezra 1 1**, 



102 THE JEWISH APOCALYPTIC 

But if God has fixed a definite measure for the 
times of the world, then the soul illuminated by 
God's spirit, initiated into his secrets, can reckon 
them up ; and so this arithmetic, this assumption 
of exact knowledge, pervades the whole apoca- 
lyptic. Daniel takes up Jeremiah's prophecy of 
the seventy years and interprets it as meaning 
seventy weeks of years, after which the end of 
the world is to come. According to the Ethiopic 
Enoch the duration of the world amounts to ten 
thousand years, according to the Ascension of 
Moses twenty thousand. It is therefore easy to 
understand that in the apocalyptic figures play 
a very considerable part. The most important 
phenomena are brought forward in the guise of 
numerical values. Numerical riddles are pro- 
pounded. 1 At this point mystery turns to 
mystification. Piety takes a morbid direction, 
and becomes at bottom irreligious ; it lacks the 
calm, equable trust in God, which can await his 
good pleasure. The Lord of heaven is dictated 
to ; curiosity, the hankering after superterrestrial 
knowledge, carries things with a high hand. It 
is exceedingly significant that in this matter Jesus 
1 Cf. Revelation of John 13 18 . 



THE JEWISH APOCALYPTIC IO3 

has not followed the apocalyptic. His intimate 
religious communion with God was involuntarily 
offended by it. Moreover Jesus himself perceived 
and expressed his opposition to it ; ' Concerning 
that day and the hour none knoweth, not even 
the angels of heaven, not even the Son, but only 
the Father.' 1 The apocalyptic itch for calcula- 
tion is always felt by the truly religious man as 
a usurpation of the rights of God. 2 We must also 
observe that calculation is not only to be found 
where definite figures are given ; the exact ex- 
position of a series of premonitory signs in strict 
succession belongs to the same field ; it is indirect 
calculation. 

If we compare the apocalypses with the older 
Jewish views, even those of the earlier post-exilic 
period, the most important difference that con- 
fronts us is the dualism of the apocalyptic theory 
of the world. 3 It is the most decisive char- 
acteristic of this class of literature, a new trait, 
foreign to Judaism. Two ages of the world 
confront each other in irreconcilable contrast, 

1 Matt. 2486. Cf. Luke 1720. 

2 Cf. e.g., Luther's distaste for the Apocalypse. 

3 Dualism means the setting up in opposition to each other 
of two, and only two, irreconcilable principles. 



104 THE JEWISH APOCALYPTIC 

' this age ' and ' the age to come,' the present 
and the future aeon. The present world is bad, 
the prey of Satan and the demons, given over to 
irremediable destruction. The future world is 
utterly different, good, divine, eternal. Here the 
expectation of the future is purely supernatural. 
Everything earthly must first fall to final ruin, and 
then comes something altogether new. It cannot 
be put more clearly than in IV Ezra 4 27 sqq. 
* This aeon is full of mourning and hardship. 
For the evil concerning which thou askest me is 
sown, and its harvest has not yet appeared. So 
long then as that which is sown has not yet been 
reaped and the place of evil seed has not yet 
vanished, the field, where the good is sown, can- 
not appear.' It is by no means merely a question 
of the destruction of evil, but also of the disappear- 
ance of the earth as the place of evil seed. A new, 
good field will appear. The future world has long 
existed in heaven, created by God before the 
creation of the world. 1 The extraordinary signific- 
ance of these new views does not consist merely 
in the substitution of a heavenly hope for an 
earthly, but chiefly in the possibility which they 
i Cf. Syr. Baruch 518 ; IV Ezra 8*2. 



THE JEWISH APOCALYPTIC 105 

establish of breaking down utterly that national 
narrowness in religion which we recognized so 
clearly in the preceding chapter. The outlook 
becomes world-wide. What is concerned is no 
longer merely Palestine and its destiny, the future 
of the Jewish people. Worlds confront each other 
and wrestle together. God and Devil, angels and 
demons wage battle. Who does not know how 
Jesus, in line with this view, conceived of his 
whole ministry as a warfare against the kingdom 
of Satan and his evil spirits P 1 Jesus' general 
theory of the world is derived from the apocalyptic, 
and is but a temporary husk for the eternal 
religious and moral truth which he brought. It 
was in the domain of these views that the religious 
individualism which, as we have seen, arose and 
spread also in the legalistic, churchly piety, 
attained its most effective power, even though it 
never reached a definite formulation. Still this 
field shows very real preparatory steps towards 
the gospel of Jesus, as we shall at once recognize 
if we now deal briefly with details. In this 
examination we can attempt to establish the main 

1 Mark 322.27 ; Matt. 12 28 . All Jesus' healings of demoniacs 
should be considered from this point of view. 



106 THE JEWISH APOCALYPTIC 

features. Precisely in the apocalyptic there is 
such a wealth of heterogeneous material that this 
limitation is absolutely necessary. 

That the present world is bad is a fundamental 
conviction in this literature. The world stands 
under the influence, partly indeed under the 
lordship, of evil spirits. The belief in dark powers, 
demons, and the like, was in Jesus' time quite 
general. 

No doubt there always existed in the Jewish 
religion, as in all popular religions, and even in 
the prophetic period, a belief in evil, uncanny 
spectres, and goblins. What is new in the 
apocalyptic is the remarkable prominence of this 
belief, and the consolidation of all these beings 
to a kingdom of evil under a monarchical govern- 
ment. A Satan is certainly known to the Old 
Testament ; but he is an angel by the throne of 
God, whose duty it is to discharge the functions 
of accuser — an office which he uses, it must be 
admitted, with malicious arrieres pensees. This 
Satan, who also bears the names Mastema, Beliar, 
Beelzebub, has become in the apocalyptic what 
naive popular belief even yet understands by the 
word ' devil ' — God's antipodes, the ruler in the 



THE JEWISH APOCALYPTIC 107 

realm of evil. Under him come the demons, the 
offspring of those sons of God whose offence is 
recorded in Genesis 6 2 ; these, as fallen angels, 
seduce man to evil, especially to idolatry, in 
invisible forms stir up the vilest passions, and 
engender all possible diseases. 1 They dislike to 
stay in their proper habitation, the desert, but in 
countless numbers they surround mankind, and lie 
in wait to destroy him. Thus did later Judaism 
behold this world, and there can be no doubt that 
Jesus simply inherited and shared these views; 
Jesus wages warfare against Satan and his kingdom* 
In his age these were no metaphors for the power 
of evil, but perfectly real and very terrible entities. 
A world which had given itself up to these dark 
powers must come to destruction. But the nearer 
this destruction draws, the more frenzied become 
the efforts of the realm of Satan. He even 
emerges from his invisibility ; he becomes human 
in the Antichrist, the last diabolical birth before 
the end, who is sometimes endowed with the 
features of a tyrant, 2 sometimes with those of a 

1 Job 1 and 2 ; Zech. 3 ; I and II Chronicles. 

2 With a reminiscence of Daniel's portrait of Antiochus 
Epiphanes. 



108 THE JEWISH APOCALYPTIC 

false prophet. 1 The most remarkable witnesses to 
the expectation of Antichrist in the New Testa- 
ment are II Thess. 2 1 - 12 and Revelation of John 13. 
Then, when God prepares to intervene, mankind 
will know it by the ' woes of Messiah.' Failures 
of harvest, unheard-of natural portents, especially 
signs in heaven, bodily degeneration in the human 
race, appalling confusion among the nations, war 
in the family, all against all, the incursion of 
terrible, mysterious peoples, among whom, in 
consequence of Ezekiel 38 sq., Gog and Magog 
are the most renowned — these are the woes. 
They announce the day of divine judgment which 
is then to dawn, the day of judgment for the world, 
to which all will be subjected, a day on which the 
dead arise. This resurrection of the dead, which 
is for the most part realistically conceived as a 
bodily rising, is one of the most important new 
views of late Judaism. It exhibits with especial 
clearness the supersession of the national idea, and 
the assertion of the individual as such. Ancient 
Israel had known nothing of any resurrection from 
the dead. Death ended all. The soul passed into 

1 In reminiscence of the third book of the Jewish Sibylline 
Oracles. 



THE JEWISH APOCALYPTIC IO9 

the Sheol, Hades, the realm of shadows, of which 
the Psalmist sings, ' In the Sheol who shall give 
thee thanks ? n The new hope first meets us in 
Isaiah 24-27, in that interpolation well called 
the apocalypse of Isaiah, and written towards the 
end of the third century B.C. : ' Awake and sing, 
ye that lie in the dust, for thy dew is a dew of the 
light, and the earth shall cast forth the shades.' 2 
Then in Daniel we read the celebrated passage I 
* Many of those that sleep in the dust of the earth 
shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to 
shame and everlasting contempt. But the wise 
shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, 
and they that have turned many to righteousness 
as the stars for ever and ever.' 3 It is well worthy 
of attention that here many, and not all, are said 
to rise. The writer is thinking especially of the 
martyrs. Even Luke 14 14 speaks only of a resur- 
rection of the righteous. It is in the Ethiopic 
Enoch that we first find the general resurrection 
of the dead, 4 which is formulated by IV Ezra as 
follows : { The earth gives back them that rest 
within, the dust releases them that sleep in it, 
the chambers restore again the souls that were 
1 Ps. 6&. 2 is. 2 6i9. 3 Dan. 122. 4 5 ji, 6 Z 6. 



110 THE JEWISH APOCALYPTIC 

entrusted to them.' 1 This article of belief, which 
was derided by so late a book as Ecclesiastes, 2 
was acknowledged, at the time of Jesus' ministry, 
by all the pious. Jesus himself accepted and 
sanctioned it. 3 Paul treats it as self-evident, 4 
though not in the solid, corporal sense of the 
popular imagination. The extraordinary, indeed 
inestimable significance of this belief lies in the 
supreme importance of the individual person ; 
his actions and omissions make all the difference. 
The whole Jewish scheme which was concerned 
only with this life is finally superseded. This is 
very clearly seen in the manner in which the great 
day of Yahweh is now conceived. Once it was 
the longed-for day on which Yahweh is to take 
vengeance on the foes of his people, exert his old 
nature as a god of battle in bloody slaughter, and 
let Israel triumph ; and now it has become the 
day of the judgment of the world. All men that 
ever lived must appear before the throne of God 
and receive sentence according to their works — a 
purely juridical act. Daniel gives a magnificent 
metaphorical description : ' I gazed on till thrones 
were placed, and one with many days sat down ; 

l 732. 2 319.22, s Mark 12 18 - 27 . * I Cor. 15 12 sq. 



THE JEWISH APOCALYPTIC III 

his raiment was white as snow, and the hair of 
his head pure as wool ; his throne was of fiery 
flames, and had wheels of burning fire. A fiery 
stream flowed out far and wide before him. 
Thousand thousands served him, and ten thousand 
times ten thousand stood at his bidding. The 
court sat, and the books were opened.' 1 In the 
judgment, which goes on to its end amid mighty 
catastrophes of nature, these books play a mo- 
mentous part. The names or the deeds of men 
stand written in them. There is, as we have seen, 
a special heavenly secretary, Michael. 2 The book 
of life, too, is occasionally mentioned separately. 
In this court takes place the final decision of the 
lot of a man. After exact weighing of his works 
he either enters into eternal life or goes to eternal 
damnation. It is the works that decide. This 
constitutes the link with legalistic piety. That it is 
in reality the state of a man's spirit which finally 
turns the beam is a profound truth that remained 
completely hidden from Judaism, and was first 
set upon the candlestick by Jesus. But it is 
palpable that in the eyes of this apocalyptic, with 
its world-wide outlook, it was no longer member- 
1 Dan. 7 9 sq. 2 Enoch too frequently receives this office. 



112 THE JEWISH APOCALYPTIC 

ship of the Jewish people but individual piety 
that really mattered. Religious individualism has 
here won the victory over the national religion, 
even though at the same time certain nationalistic 
elements still held their ground with ineradicable 
tenacity. This is and remains, in spite of all that 
is fantastic in its detailed conceptions, the im- 
measurable significance of this apocalyptic specula- 
tion. It prepared the way for the word of Jesus, 
* What does it help a man if he win the whole 
world and lose his own soul ? n And this idea of 
divine retribution for every individual in the 
future life casts its shadow before upon the time 
between death and resurrection to judgment. 
The old conceptions of Sheol were more and more 
transformed. In the intermediate time there is 
a foretaste of the fate to come. The souls of the 
pious come into pleasant, lucid regions of the 
underworld ; they can already behold their future 
blessedness ; or they are preserved in subter- 
ranean chambers, in deep peace, under the care 
of angels ; sometimes they are even already in 
heaven. 2 On the other hand the souls of the 
ungodly go down to cold and dark places, are 

iMatt. 1626. 2 Luke i6&. 



THE JEWISH APOCALYPTIC 113 

forced to wander without rest, and are already 
tormented. 1 The final retribution after the 
judgment is thus potent beforehand. Incidentally 
it should be noted that in Alexandrian Judaism, 
and also occasionally in that of Palestine, the 
final retribution follows immediately after death. 
The soul of the pious man comes at once to God ; 
that of the ungodly is at once annihilated. Here, 
too, Greek ideas, Platonic ideas, have often 
exerted an influence ; but we cannot now enter 
into detail. In the main stream of Palestinian 
Judaism it is always after the resurrection, in the 
divine judgment, that the human soul is overtaken 
by its final destiny. And in what does this 
consist ? First of all the pious receive eternal 
life. They enter upon a new, supernatural, in- 
transient existence in the divine glory. Light 
and life are here very closely allied. 2 It is ex- 
tremely clear that this new life was nevertheless 
contemplated in earthly colours. Man cannot 
escape from the images of the life that surrounds 
him ; his thought is bounded by earthly forms. 
The Jewish people certainly formed very sensuous, 
realistic conceptions of the life eternal, as indeed 

1 Luke 1 623. 2 Dan. 12^ sq. Ethiop. Enoch 58 s . 

I 



114 THE JEWISH APOCALYPTIC 

often happens even in our own day, and must 
always continue to happen. The pious enter 
into the Paradise, the Garden of Eden transferred 
to heaven ; this garden, in which according to 
the legend Adam dwelt, is now said to have existed 
before all creation. There they lead a joyous 
being by the tree of life, whose fruits, which confer 
immortality, they enjoy, and by the water of life, 
which they may now drink. Connected with 
this is the idea of a heavenly Jerusalem, which is 
the old, earthly Jerusalem transferred to heaven, 
and is now depicted in the most radiant colours. 1 
That is the glorious fate of the pious. And the 
ungodly ? They go into eternal damnation. 
Darkness and destruction are here closely allied. 
They are tortured or annihilated. Fire plays a 
great part in these conceptions. The terrible and 
hideous vision of hell takes form. While accord- 
ing to the older view the enemies of Israel were 
to be destroyed with pain in the valley of Jehosha- 
phat, now the impious are to be tortured for ever 
in a subterranean or celestial place of torment, a 
fiery furnace or a lake of fire. These are the two 
different fates which follow upon the universal 
1 Revelation of John 21. 



THE JEWISH APOCALYPTIC 115 

judgment, with which the present, terrestrial 
world passes away ; the mode of its passing is 
sometimes taken to be a vast conflagration. And 
then the new heaven and the new earth, which 
were once spoken of figuratively in Isaiah 65 17 , 
come in complete reality, the second, supernatural, 
divine world of the good. This was the resplend- 
ent image offered to hope by the apocalyptic 
writers, an image which is, however — inevitably, 
as we have seen — depicted in earthly colours. It 
so comes to pass that we often find in their descrip- 
tions a grotesque mixture of concrete earthliness 
with the celestial and the supernatural, so that 
at the first glance we may well doubt whether we 
are still amid the pictures of the old or already in 
the new. But taken as a whole there is no possible 
doubt that the apocalyptic makes a decisive, 
thoroughgoing cleavage between this life and the 
next ; it represents a dualistic theory of the 
universe. And what has become of the Messiah ? 
Within the frame of this picture he seems to have 
no place. In fact there is a series of apocalypses 
which do not mention him at all. 1 But where he 
does appear he has become quite another being. 
1 E.g., Daniel, and the Ascension of Moses. 



Il6 THE JEWISH APOCALYPTIC 

We may even speak of a new, a second Messianic 
figure, so great is the transformation. The son 
of David, the ideal of a theocratic king, who rules 
over the Jewish people in Palestine with justice 
and righteousness, has become a heavenly, 
spiritual being, who existed with God before the 
creation of the world, 1 and remained safe in his 
presence, to emerge and descend at the end of 
the age upon the clouds of heaven, surrounded 
by angels. His title runs : the Son of Man. The 
most remarkable fact is this, that the new figure 
of Messiah shows no trace of a gradual develop- 
ment, but starts into being in a moment, like 
Athene from the head of Zeus. We find it in the 
imagery of the Ethiopic Enoch, especially chapters 
40-49, 2 and again in IV Ezra 13 1 - 13 , 25 - 51 . There 
is a tendency to connect it with the celebrated 
passage in Daniel, 7 13 sq. : ' I saw in the night 
visions, and lo there came one like unto a son of 
man, and he came to him of many days, and they 
brought him near before him. And there was 
given him dominion and honour and lordship, that 
all peoples, nations, and languages should serve 

1 The ' pre-existence ' of Messiah. 
2 Consider more particularly 48 s - 6 , 49A 



THE JEWISH APOCALYPTIC 1VJ 

him. His rule shall be everlasting and shall not 
pass away, and his kingdom shall not be destroyed.' 
But neither the new conception of Messiah nor the 
title Son of Man has its origin in this passage. 
Apart from the fact that Daniel is certainly not 
speaking of the Messiah, but of the people of 
Israel — though on this point his later readers 
might easily fall into a misapprehension — the figure 
of this son of man in this context in Daniel is 
itself a riddle, which calls for explanation. It is 
most probable that we have here the influences 
of foreign religions, though we are certainly not 
able to point them out exactly. Most of the 
apocalyptic writers desired to retain the Messiah. 
But the earthly ruler was no longer applicable ; 
so he was united with a divine, spiritual being, who 
must have possessed the prototype of human 
form ; he too was transferred to heaven, in con- 
formity with the supernatural character of the 
apocalyptic. That this new heavenly Messiah is a 
patched-up compromise, who would be better 
away, is easily seen in the uncertainty of the 
writers regarding his function. In Enoch 48* sq. 
we read : ' He will be a staff for the righteous 
and holy, that they may lean on him and not 



Il8 THE JEWISH APOCALYPTIC 

fall ; he will be the light of the people and the 
hope of those that are troubled in heart. All 
that dwell upon the mainland will fall down before 
him and adore and give praise, laud and extol 
the name of the lord of spirits. To this end was 
he chosen.' How indefinite all this is, and what 
is the use of it ? According to IV Ezra he shall 
redeem creation, create the new order of things, 
destroy the army of the nations that bands itself 
against him, and protect united Israel. 1 Here we 
can detect a much stronger echoing of the old 
ideas of Messiah. A much greater advance is 
made when this celestial figure is actually ap- 
pointed by God to be the judge of the world. 2 
It is of course true even here that the new image 
of the Messiah nowhere appears quite unadul- 
terated, but is considerably alloyed with old 
characteristics — indeed, that can be seen quite 
clearly in the Revelation of John — but that does 
not affect the fact that in reality there are two 
different pictures. The desire to combine the old 
picture with the new has led to the peculiar 
doctrine of an intermediate Messianic kingdom. 

i IV Ezra 1326, 34-38, 49. 
2 Eth. Enoch 51, 55, 61-63 ; cf. Matt. 2 5 si-* 5 . 



THE JEWISH APOCALYPTIC II9 

Before the general resurrection and the great 
judgment Messiah shall reign with the righteous 
upon earth. The duration of this kingdom is 
variously given. The reign of a thousand years, 
the millennium, 1 has become especially celebrated 
through the Revelation of John 20 6 , and has 
often played a momentous part in the history of 
the church. But what gives the newer image of 
Messiah its highest significance is the fact that 
the Messianic consciousness of Jesus was founded 
upon it. The old idea of Messiah could not 
possibly, in view of the whole nature of Jesus, be 
adopted by him. But the new idea opened out 
to him the possibility of connecting his unique 
religious consciousness of sonship and vocation 
with the highest title that Judaism possessed. 
Jesus then believed, not that he was the Messiah 
(in the old national sense) but that he would be- 
come the Messiah (in the new apocalyptic sense), 
that he would come as Messiah upon the clouds 
of heaven. 2 

It used to be a favourite device to associate 



1 Chiliasmus, or Millenarianism. 

2 See, for a more detailed exposition, Bousset : ' Jesus,' 
Chapter III. 



120 THE JEWISH APOCALYPTIC 

the apocalyptic with Israelite prophecy. But the 
apocalyptists themselves do not claim to be 
prophets. 1 Prophecy is extinguished, and they 
are the wise men, privileged above the crowd, to 
whom the secrets of God have been confided. 
In fact, then, and in spite of a few lines of con- 
nexion, 2 the difference is really profound. The 
visions alone are enough to make this clear. The 
prophets had real visions, inner experiences which 
convulsed the soul, the forms of which they 
transferred, with great agitation, to the world of 
reality outside them. If this transference, this 
imputation of external reality was illusion, still 
the inner experiences were intensely real. The 
creative power of God worked in them from time 
to time with compulsion, with enormous, original 
force, often against their own human thoughts 
and opinions. It is not to be denied that the 
apocalyptists may also have had such actual 
visions 3 ; but the vision is certainly in their case 

1 The Revelation of John, enveloped as it is in the Christian 
consciousness, forms a not unintelligible exception. 

* We meet these especially in Joel 3 and in IV Ezra 1 
and Zechariah. 

3 There are even signs to be observed that the Rabbis of 
the first century a.d. were themselves not without ecstatic 
experiences. 



THE JEWISH APOCALYPTIC 121 

for the most part a mere form of literary art. 
They write in the visionary style, just as we may 
write in the style of the fairy tale. The imitative 
instinct which was so characteristic of the apoca- 
lyptic comes clearly to light in this use of the 
prophetic ecstasy. The artificial character of 
most apocalyptic visions reveals itself — apart 
altogether from their great number — especially 
in the fact that it is quite impossible to unite them 
into one consistent spectacle. We are presented 
with an abundance of the most heterogeneous 
and often impossible details. The extraordinarily 
complicated, elaborate, and unnatural character 
of these visions points to the play of a rankly 
luxuriant imagination. If, for instance, the Re- 
velation of John be read from this point of view, 
the proofs will present themselves in superflux. 
The vaticination, too, of the prophets and of the 
apocalyptists is different. What the prophets 
aim at is the clear understanding of their own 
contemporary conditions ; the whole interest of 
the apocalyptists lies in the future. The prophets 
are men who enter passionately into the great 
questions and contests of their time, but, filled 
with the spirit of Yahweh, will not let themselves 



122 THE JEWISH APOCALYPTIC 

be dazzled by externals ; taught by the past 
they have gained a genuine insight into historical 
events, and are so able to show a right estimate of 
the future. On the other hand the apocalyptists 
despair of the world altogether. Past and present 
are so bad that one can only learn from them that 
this world must needs fall a prey to destruction, 
and a new, good world come in its place. What 
the apocalyptic aims at is to gain a conception, 
here and now, of that future world, and above all 
to know when it is to come. And accordingly it 
does not give us prediction, but uncontrollable 
speculation bound up with divination : for the 
apocalyptic calculation of coming events is nothing 
else. And how different is the kind of future 
which the prophets and the apocalyptists con- 
template ! The prophets are predominantly con- 
cerned with the future which stands connected 
with the present. Even when they think of a 
more distant future, and however much they may 
transform and idealize, it still remains always 
terrestrial, within the sphere of national expecta- 
tion. On the contrary the apocalyptists are 
concerned with a future which shall arrive through 
an utter breach with the present — the new, 



THE JEWISH APOCALYPTIC 123 

celestial aeon, which is utterly different from the 
world that now is. The dualism of their world- 
theory is the unbridgeable chasm which separates 
apocalyptic from prophecy. Prophecy knows no 
such dualism, and, consistently with this, knows 
nothing of the resurrection of the dead, the 
universal judgment, paradise and hell ; the whole 
detail in the two settings forth of the future is 
different ; and, as we have seen, the Messianic 
hopes had to undergo a complete transformation. 
The question, then, forces itself most strongly 
upon us, what is the source of all this new element 
in the apocalypses ; above all the new dualistic 
theory, the great dramatic fight to an end between 
the kingdom of Satan and the kingdom of God^ 
ending in the universal judgment, with all its 
accompanying phenomena and its consequences ? 
It cannot be denied, when this is compared with 
the earlier Israelite religion, that something new 
is here to be seen. We may remind ourselves 
that in the earlier time even evil was occasionally 
associated with Yahweh 1 ; that in the prophets 
evil arises in the will of man, in his disobedience, 
his perversity, but no trace is to be found of any 
i II Sam. 24 1 . 



124 THE JEWISH APOCALYPTIC 

Satanic realm of evil. We might be tempted to 
derive the new matter in the apocalyptic from 
Daniel. It is certainly evident that the whole 
of the later apocalyptic takes its stand on this 
work, and dependence upon it cannot be denied. 
Must we then regard the author of Daniel as an 
eminent creative personality, whom the later 
writers have merely imitated ? The work itself, 
however, certainly gives us no such impression. I 
have already pointed out, while considering the 
new Messianic idea in the apocalyptic, that a 
close consideration of this book impresses us with 
the conviction that Daniel, too, was working with 
traditional materials, which do not consistently 
cohere. This is, indeed, the case when we con- 
sider the writing in other aspects ; and so the 
question at once arises, whence did Daniel obtain 
the new element ? It is not without justification 
that an appeal is made to the severe oppression 
of the Maccabean age, under which, in this book 
of Daniel, the first apocalypse meets us. Much 
may be explained by reference to this, especially 
for instance the eager expectation of a speedy 
end, the judgment. That time under Antiochus 
Epiphanes was so terrible that we can understand 



THE JEWISH APOCALYPTIC 125 

how such a yearning could arise. We might 
perhaps also assume that the fate of the righteous, 
who suffered a martyr's death, wrung the hearts 
of pious men, and called forth the hope that they 
would not be allowed to remain in death ; God 
must, for his righteousness' sake, awaken them 
unto life. But even here all that is really com- 
prehensible is that an already existent belief in 
the resurrection should have been laid hold of, 
and not that such a belief could have been actually 
engendered by the desire of certain individuals. 
Above all, the rise of a theory of the world which 
was at once dualistic and individualistic, such 
as that in which this belief in the resurrection was 
firmly planted, cannot be regarded as a necessary 
or even intelligible outcome of the confusion of 
those times. It is remarkable that the figure of 
the heavenly Messiah is first found in the Ethiopic 
Enoch, long after the time of terror was past. No 
external origin in an historical situation can be 
established. There is only one possibility left to 
explain the new element, namely that foreign 
religions have exerted an influence on later 
Judaism. First and foremost we might consider 
the Persian religion, with which Judaism came 



126 THE JEWISH APOCALYPTIC 

into contact in the Babylonian plain. The Baby- 
lonian empire was superseded by the Persian. 
We should remember the friendly relation in 
which Judaism stood to this very Persian power. 
Cyrus permitted the Jews to return from Babylon ; 
in the second Isaiah he is even denoted as the 
Messiah. In other matters, too, the Persians 
showed kindness towards the Jews. It is there- 
fore not difficult to conceive that religious elements 
might have penetrated into Judaism from a 
Persian source. And in this Persian religion, 
which likewise possesses its apocalyptic, we find 
what we need. Dualism was its own, ancient, 
original belief. Ahura-Mazda (Ormuzd), the 
supreme good God, and Angra-Mainyu (Ahriman), 
the evil spirit, had always confronted one another 
in sharp antagonism. The whole history of the 
world is a varying contest between these two 
powers, which ends with a decisive victory of the 
good God. Here we have the two worlds — the 
old world is at last destroyed with fire — the 
general judgment, the resurrection of the dead 
to be judged, the terrible torture of sinners. In- 
deed all that we seek is here to be found, at least 
the essential, dualism and world-encompassing 



THE JEWISH APOCALYPTIC 127 

speculation. It must not be denied for a moment, 
it is rather to be expected from the first, that there 
are differences, some of which are important, 
between Persian and Jewish apocalyptic. No- 
body maintains that the Persian apocalyptic was 
taken over wholesale, lock, stock, and barrel. 
But we may hold that at decisive points Persian 
influences were operative. Besides the Persian 
religion those of Babylon and Egypt seem also to 
have affected Judaism, which had likewise come 
into close contact with them both. There are 
numerous points at which that can be shown with 
great certainty. In the region, for instance, of 
the doctrine of angels and demons we come across 
conceptions which, while they are unintelligible 
as purely Jewish products, are at once explained 
by a glance at the Babylonian religion. We 
cannot here pursue this subject into detail. It 
must always be remembered that we are dealing 
with the period of world-wide Hellenistic civiliza- 
tion, the great age of the mixture of religions. 
From the time of Alexander the Great the different 
peoples mingled like rushing waters, and with 
them their ideas and their religions. In spite of 
the mighty reaction of the Maccabean age Judaism 



128 CONCLUSION 

was no longer able to hold itself aloof. On the 
contrary we observe in all fields that late Judaism 
exhibits specifically the character of a mixed 
religion. 



CONCLUSION 

If we now look back once more over the region 
which we have traversed, in order to realize as a 
whole the religious tone and temper of the Judaism 
of that time, our soul stands face to face with a 
remarkable scene, which we contemplate with 
mixed feelings. With what fervour, yea, with 
what passion, did this unique people long for the 
living God ! Who can read the never-ageing 
Psalms without feeling, ■■ Here is genuine religious 
feeling at its source ; here is also true religion ' ? 
There is no other people which even approaches 
the importance for religion of the Jews. Paul 
was well warranted in testifying of his own nation 
that they had a zeal for God. 1 And yet a mis- 
guided zeal, which found no true satisfaction. 
We have made acquaintance with the whole gamut 
of human feeling, from the most tremulous anguish 

iRom. io2. 



CONCLUSION 129 

of a profound sense of sin to a man's most arrogant 
confidence in his own performance. Alongside 
the individual piety stood the strong tenacity 
of the nationalistic religion, beside the life lived 
in the present stood the life lived in the future, 
beside the spirit of penance stood the spirit of 
triumph. And between them, all the many 
various shades of feeling. We see a heaving and 
tossing, out of which now this mood emerges, now 
that. But one thing we miss, the unshakable 
rock in the raging sea, the unity in multiplicity, 
the sure peace amid the tumult. He who surveys 
the whole must say, after all, Judaism lacked that 
stability of confidence which is certain of the issue. 
Where one day the most emphatic confidence 
was ostensibly felt the next day might see the 
most painful insecurity. At the time of the 
appearance of Jesus the Jewish religion oscillated 
dubiously between extremes. There was no cer- 
tainty of salvation. 

Amid this flux and reflux of the most various 
religious moods Jesus appeared, and wrought, for 
all his dependence upon the conceptions of his 
age and the surroundings under which he grew to 
manhood, a complete change of value in the 

K 



130 CONCLUSION 

decisive, fundamental factors. The Jew had a 
high opinion, when all was said, of his own person 
and the worth of his own performance. Jesus, 
on the contrary, has taught all ages the unforget- 
table lesson that when the single man has done all 
that it was his duty to do, he is an unprofitable 
servant. 1 Jesus has destroyed the religious worth 
of single performances as such, and — in spite of 
all his diligent insistence on active goodness — 
pointed to the fountain of a truly good and heart- 
felt intent as the really momentous thing. On 
the other hand the Jewish thought of God was 
intrinsically mean, for he was conceived in the 
image of a strict taskmaster. Jesus, on the 
contrary, has taught all ages unforgettably his 
immeasurably grand conception of God, which 
culminates in the saying that one sinner who 
repents is of more value in his eyes than ninety- 
nine righteous persons, who need no repentance. 2 
In its deepest sense he set upon the candlestick 
that word, ' A man sees what is before his eyes, 
but the Lord looks upon the heart.' 3 What Jesus 
brought could not but be felt, and was felt indeed, 
as a wonderful message of joy, whose words fell 
i Luke 17 10 . 2 Luke is 7 ; 3 1 Sam. 16 7 . 



CONCLUSION 131 

like sunshine into the hearts of all that laboured 
and were heavy laden, 1 all those that, beneath 
the crushing load of the single legal ordinances, 
could neither attain to true earthly energy nor to 
true communion with God. Jesus gave the great 
and needful liberation from all religious frittering 
and futility. He set man straightway before 
God himself, but before the face of a Father, 
bringing us at once a mighty obligation and a 
mighty enfranchisement. Thereupon the whole 
confusing multiplicity of individual works passed 
out of thought ; Jesus brought rest to the soul, the 
only true and certain peace of a heart made one 
with God. 

iMatt. n*. 



APPENDIX 

I. Historical Table from the Exile to the Destruction 
of Jerusalem. 

This longer period is chosen because the stage of develop- 
ment in which the Jewish religion stood at the time of Jesus' 
ministry began with the Exile and ended with the destruction 
of Jerusalem. It was not until after 70 a.d. that complete 
legalistic ossification, with elimination of the popular piety 
and the apocalyptic, set in — the supremacy of the Rabbis. 
Only the most important dates are here given. 

B.C. 

586-538 The Jews in exile in Babylonia. 

538 Cyrus, king of the Persians, puts an end to 

the Babylonian empire and permits the Jews 

to return. First return of the exiles under 

Zerubbabel and Joshua. 
538-332 Palestine under Persian suzerainty (from Cyrus 

to Darius III). 
458 Return of a second body of exiles under Ezra. 

445 Nehemiah governor in Jerusalem. 

444 The Law is published by Ezra : probably not 

the whole five ' books of Moses,' but chiefly 

one of the sources of these books, namely, the 

so-called Priestly Codex. Pledging of the 

people to keep the Law. 
332 Alexander the Great destroys the Persian empire, 

and so gains sovereignty over the Jews. 
332-320 Palestine under Macedonian governors. 

320 Capture of Jerusalem by the Egyptian king 

Ptolemy I, Lagi. 



HISTORICAL TABLE 



133 



B.C. 
320-197 

301-264 

197-167 
175-164 
I75-I68 



167-142 



165 
142 

141 



I4I-63 



63 




37B.C- 


-44A.D. 


37 B.C. 


-4 B.C. 


4B.C- 


39A.D. 


A.D. 




27-36 




about 


29 


about 


30 


66-73 




70 





Palestine alternately under Egyptian and Syrian 
rule. 

Happy time of peace under the mild govern- 
ment of trie Egyptian dynasty of the Ptolemies. 

Palestine under the Syrian rule of the Seleucids. 

Antiochus IV, Epiphanes, king of the Syrians. 

Forcible Hellenising of the Jews by Antiochus 
Epiphanes. Attempt to destroy the Jewish 
religion. Profanation of the Temple. 

The Jewish war of liberation under the leader- 
ship of the Maccabees (the priests Mattathias 
and his sons Judas, Jonathan, Simon) against 
the Syrians. 

New consecration of the Temple. 

Recognition of the independence of Judaea by 
the Syrian king Demetrius. 

The Maccabees or Hasmonaeans (so called from 
their ancestor Hasmon) are by popular decision 
recognized as the high-priestly and princely 
dynasty. 

Palestine under the rule of the Hasmonaean 
dynasty (Simon, John Hyrcanus, Aristobulus 
I, Alexander Jannaeus, Alexandra, Aristo- 
bulus II). 

Pompey takes Jerusalem. From this point 
onwards continuous Roman rule. 

Frequently interrupted rule of the Idumaean 
family of the Herods in Palestine as a whole 
or parts of it, under Roman suzerainty. 

Herod the Great. 

Herod Antipas ruler over Galilee and Peraea : 
Jesus' sovereign. 

Pontius Pilate procurator of Judaea. 

Public appearance of Jesus. ^ During the reign of 

._ ,, 1 1 " V the Roman Emperor 

Death of Jesus. J Tiberius, 14-37. 

The great fight against Rome. 

Destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. 



134 



II. Chronological Survey of the most important 
Literary Sources. 



B.C. 

about 1 80 



165 
about 140 

about 140 

about 140 

about 130 



abouti30-ioo 



about 130-70 



The Wisdom of Jesus Sirach, a voluminous 
collection of sayings, written originally in 
Hebrew^ with the object of showing how a 
happy life can be led in practical wisdom. 
(About 130 translated into Greek by the 
grandson of the author.) 

The Old Testament book of Daniel, the first 
apocalypse. 

Close of the Old Testament collection of Psalms. 
The songs belong altogether to the post-exilic 
time. Many are of late date. 

The third book of the Sibylline Oracles, a kind 
of Alexandrine apocalypse, which contains 
little of religious value. 

The book of Esther relates in the form of a 
novel, with passionate hatred against 
foreigners, the origin of the feast of Purim, 
and has likewise found a place in the Old 
Testament. 

The Jewish writing underlying the Testament 
of the Twelve Patriarchs (in the time of 
Hyrcanus) . Admonitions, given before death 
by the twelve sons of Jacob to their children, 
concerning jealousy, envy, chastity, arrogance, 
courage, etc. The writing, as we now have 
it, contains Christian interpolations. 

The chief constituent part of the Ethiopic 
Enoch, an important apocalypse. The figura- 
tive discourses, chapters 37-71, belong to the 
years 104-78 and are not of Christian, but 
like the rest of Jewish origin. 

The book of Judith, a legend, written from the 
Pharisaic point of view, of the murder of the 
general Holophernes, who was in the service 
of Nebuchadnezzar, by Judith. 



SURVEY OF LITERARY SOURCES 



135 



about 70 



63-48 



about 100-63 The first book of the Maccabees, in the main an 
excellent, credible account of the Maccabean 
revolt. 

The book of Jubilees or the Little Genesis, a 
haggadic commentary on Genesis (time of 
Alexandra). 

The Psalms of Solomon, written from the Pharis- 
aic point of view, with a strong emphasis on 
the Messianic hope. 

The book of Tobit, a novel-like account of the 
fortunes of a pious Jew, which was written 
during the last 200 years B.C., in any case 
before the beginning of the Herodian Temple 
in 21 b.c. 

The second book of the Maccabees, an un- 
historical account, written in an edifying vein, 
especially of the time of Judas Maccabaeus ; 
Pharisaic tone ; actualty an attack on the 
Maccabees. 

The Wisdom of Solomon, one of the most 
important writings of Alexandrian Judaism, 
which was written between Sirach and Philo, 
probably nearer to the time of Philo. 
4 B.C.-6 A.D. The Ascension of Moses, a fragment of an 
apocalypse, in which Moses gives his successor 
Joshua a revelation concerning future events 
till the end of the world ; probably not by a 
Zealot, but by a pious man who set himself 
against all sanctimonious hypocrisy. 

The literary work of the Alexandrian Philo. 

In the first century : the fourth book of the 
Maccabees, an edifying philosophical sermon 
on the command of the passions by the reason, 
guided by the Law ; of Alexandrian origin. 

The Slavonic Enoch, in the first half of the first 
century, certainly before 70 a.d., clearly shows 
the combination of Judaism with Platonic, 
Parsi, Egyptian, and Babylonian elements. 



(?) 



(?) 



(?) 



A.D. 

about 20 
(?) 



(?) 



I36 SURVEY OF LITERARY SOURCES 

A.D. 

76-79 The work of the Jewish historian Josephus 

' on the Jewish War.' 
93-94 Josephus' Jewish Archaeology (Antiquities), 

about 81-96 IV Ezra, the most important Jewish apoca- 
lypse, whose object is to comfort the Jews, 
driven almost to despair by the destruction of 
Jerusalem, with the nearness of the new aeon 
and its solution of all riddles, 
about 100 The Syriac apocalypse of Baruch, with the 
same object as IV Ezra, and no doubt written 
later. 
about 50-150 The writings united in the New Testament. 
Among these the genuine words of Jesus, the 
old sources of the Gospels and Acts, the letters 
of Paul, written by a whilom Pharisee, and 
the Revelation of John (which has made con- 
siderable use of originally Jewish material) 
offer a rich field of material for the under- 
standing of later Judaism. 
All the sources here named, so far as they are not contained 
in the Old or the New Testament, with exception of the 
Slavonic Enoch and the works of Philo and Josephus, are 
accessible to every reader of German in the work of E. 
Kantsch, ' Die Apokryphen und die Pseudepigraphen des 
Alten Testaments,' 2 vols., 1900. 

Protestant and Jewish scholars differ in their use of sources 
to this extent, that in depicting the Judaism of Jesus' time 
the protestants prefer the above named contemporary sources, 
while the Jews pay more regard to later sources. Among 
these should be mentioned the Mishna (doctrine) and 
Tosephta (completion, i.e., of the Mishna), in which the 
customary law was reduced to writing. The Mishna received 
its final redaction at the end of the second Christian century. 
The Talmud, both the Palestinian (belonging to the fourth 
century a.d.) and the Babylonian (the sixth century), is a 
detailed commentary on the text of the Mishna, with edifying 
as well as legal matter. The Targums are Aramaic, often 
free paraphrastic translations of the Old Testament text, 



SURVEY OF LITERARY SOURCES I37 

dating from the third and fourth centuries a.d. The Midrashes 
contain commentaries on the text of scripture, especially the 
later, edifying kind ; they begin with the second century a.d. 
These writings contain very much older material, especially 
the Mishna, and the tract Pirke Aboth, i.e., Sayings of the 
Fathers, utterances of certain renowned teachers, mostly of 
the period 70-170 a.d., but also of earlier date. (This tract 
is embodied in the Mishna, but does not belong to it). The 
preference of contemporary sources is justified : (1) because 
it is a general methodic principle to adduce the literature 
which stands nearest in point of time ; (2) because after 
70 a.d. a considerable change befell Judaism in the direction 
of legalistic rigidity ; ( 3) because the older material of the 
later rabbinical literature can only be employed after a very 
difficult, critical sifting, and in accordance with views which 
can be substantiated by means of contemporary sources. 

III. Survey of the most important Literary Sources, 

CLASSIFIED WITH REGARD TO THEIR CONTENTS. 

A. — Palestinian Literature. 

1 . Historical works : I Maccabees, Josephus. 

2. Proverbial literature : Jesus Sirach, Pirke Aboth. 

3. Religious poetry : The latest Old Testament 

Psalms, the Psalms of Solomon. 

4. Edifying legends : Esther, Judith, Tobit, II 

Maccabees. 

5. Haggadic interpretation : Jubilees. 

6. Apocalypses : Daniel, Testament of the Twelve 

Patriarchs (original basis), 
Ethiopic Enoch, Ascension of 
Moses, Slavonic Enoch, IV Ezra, 
Syriac apocalypse of Baruch. 

B. — Alexandrian Literature. 
The Sibylline Oracles, Wisdom of Solomon, the writings of 
Philo, IV Maccabees. 



LITERATURE 

Among important scientific works the following deal with 
this subject : — 
♦Schurer : ' Geschichte des judischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu 

Christi,' 3 vols., 3rd ed., 1898-1901. 
Bousset : ' Die Religion des Judentums im neutestament- 

lichen Zeitalter,' 1903. 
On the Jewish side the most important work is : — 
*Graetz : ' Geschichte der Juden,' 4th ed. 1888. 

These works are helpful for scholarly study. The general 
reader may consult : — 
Wellhausen : ' Israelitische und jiidische Geschichte,' 4th 

ed., 1901. 
Schlatter : ' Israels Geschichte von Alexander dem Grossen 

bis Hadrian,' 1901. 
O. Holtzmann : ■ Die jiidische Schriftgelehrsamkeit zur Zeit 

Jesu,' 1901. 
Bousset : ' Die jiidische Apocalyptik,' 1903. 
Baldensperger : ' Das spatere Judentum als Vorstufe des 

Christentums,' 1900. 

The three last named are shorter expositions. 

* English Translations : — 

Schurer : ' A History of the Jewish People in the Time 
of Jesus Christ,' 5 vols., 1890 (translated from the second 
German edition). 

Graetz : ' History of the Jews,' 5 vols., 189 1-2. 



Verzeichnis der erschienenen Volksbiicher. 

I. Reihe : Die Religion des Neuen Testaments, i. Wernle : 
Die Quellen des Lebens Jesu. n. — 20. Taus. — 2./3- Bousset : 
Jesus. 21. — 30. Taus. — 4. Vischer : Die Paulusbriefe. — 
5./6. Wrede : Paulus. 11. — 20. Taus. — 7. Hollmann : Welche 
Religion hatten die Juden als Jesus auftrat ? — 8. u. 10. 
Schmiedel : Das vierte Evangelium gegeniiber den drei 
ersten. — 12. Ders. : Evangelium, Brief e und Offenbarung des 
Johannes. — 9. v. Dobschiitz : Das apostolische Zeitalter. — 
11. Holtzmann : Die Entstehung des Neuen Testaments. — 13. 
Knopf : Die Zukunftshoffnungen des Urchristentums. — 14. 
Jiilicher : Paulus und Jesus. — 15. Geffcken : Christliche 
Apokryphen. — 16. Bruckner : Der sterbende und auferstehende 
Gottheiland i.d. oriental. Religionen u. i. Verhaltnis z. Christ- 
ent. — 17. E. Petersen : Die wunderbare Geburt des Heilandes. 
1909. — 18. /19. Weiss : Christus. Die Anfange des Dogmas. 1909. 

II. Reihe : Die Religion des Alten Testaments. 1 . Lehmann- 
Haupt : Israels Geschicke im Rahmen der Weltgeschichte. 
(In Vorbereitung.) — 2. Kuchler : Hebraische Volkskunde. — 
3. I und II. Merx : Die Biicher Moses und Josua. — 5. Budde : 
Das prophetische Schrifttum. — 7. Beer : Saul, David, Salomo. 
— 8. Gunkel : Elias. — 9. Nowack : Amos und Hosea. — 10. 
Guthe : Jesaia. — 14. Lohr : Seelenkampfe und Glaubens- 
note vor 2000 Jahren. — 15. Benzinger : Wie wurden die 
Juden das Volk des Gesetzes ? — 17. Bertholet : Daniel und 
die griechische Gefahr. 

III. Reihe : Allgemeine Religionsgeschichte. Religionsver- 
gleichung. 1. Pfleiderer : Vorbereitung des Christen turns in 
der griechischen Philosophic — 2. Bertholet : Seelenwanderung 
— 3. Soderblom : Die Religionen der Erde. — 4. Hackmann : 
Der Ursprung des Buddhismus. — 5. Ders. : Der sudliche 
Buddhismus. — 7. Ders. : Der Buddhismus in China usw. — 6. 
Wendland, Die Schopfung der Welt. — 8. Becker : Christentum 
und Islam. — 9. Vollmer : Vom Lesen und Deuten heiliger Schrif- 
ten. — 10. Gressmann : Die Ausgrabungen in Palastina u. d. A. T. 

IV. Reihe : Kirchengeschichte. 1. Jiingst : Pietisten. — 
2. Wernle : Paulus Gerhardt. — 3-/4. Kriiger : Das Papsttum. 
Seine Idee und ihre Trager. — 5. Weinel : Die urchristliche 
und die heutige Mission. — 6. Mehlhorn : Die Blutezeit der 
deutschen Mystik. — 7. Holl : Der Modernismus. — 8. Ohle : 
Der Hexenwahn. — 9. Baur : Johann Calvin. 1909. 

V. Reihe : Weltanschauung und Religionsphilosophie. 
1. Niebergall : Welches ist der beste Religion ? — 2. Traub : 
Die Wunder im Neuen Testament. 11. — 20. Taus. — 3. J. Peter- 
sen : Naturforschung und Glaube. 11. — 15. Taus. — 4. Meyer : 
Was uns Jesus heute ist. — 5. O. Schmiedel : Richard Wagners 
religiose Weltanschauung. — 6. Bousset : Unser Gottesglaube. 

Particulars as to price may be obtained from the publishers : 
J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck) Tubingen. 



